I was checking on some information in the Maxillofacial Surgery volume of The Medical Department of the US Army in the World War today (does that make me sound smart!?) and came across this passage on patients who had splints in their mouths for various fractures:
"Many of the soldiers with their mouths splinted were unable to smoke. This was overcome by placing a glass of water or cup of coffee or chocolate where they could reach it, when, after wetting their lips with their fingers which had been immersed in the liquid, they were able to smoke as long as the moisture remained. This gave them a great deal of comfort. It was possible, also, in cases in which the lower jaw was fixed or missing, for the patient to hold one nostril closed and then, by moistening the other nostril and putting a cigarette in it, to inhale through it, thus smoking quite readily."
I wish I had a picture of that.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Wednesday, May 6, 2009
May 6: A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed
A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed
Second in NMHM’s Walter Reed Centennial Year Lecture Series
When: Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Where: Russell Auditorium, National Museum of Health and Medicine
What: Kick off National Nurses Week with "A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed." An informal discussion, featuring the history of nursing at Walter Reed, perspectives on current practices, and thoughts on the future of the Army Nurse Corps, will commemorate 100 years of nursing at Walter Reed.
Presenters: Debbie Cox, former Army Nurse Corps Historian; CPT Jennifer Easley, Medical/Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, WRAMC; LTC Patrick Ahearne, Staff Officer, Office of the Army Nurse Corps, Office of the Army Surgeon General
Cost: Free
Info: (202)782-2200 or nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil
www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum
Second in NMHM’s Walter Reed Centennial Year Lecture Series
When: Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Where: Russell Auditorium, National Museum of Health and Medicine
What: Kick off National Nurses Week with "A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed." An informal discussion, featuring the history of nursing at Walter Reed, perspectives on current practices, and thoughts on the future of the Army Nurse Corps, will commemorate 100 years of nursing at Walter Reed.
Presenters: Debbie Cox, former Army Nurse Corps Historian; CPT Jennifer Easley, Medical/Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, WRAMC; LTC Patrick Ahearne, Staff Officer, Office of the Army Nurse Corps, Office of the Army Surgeon General
Cost: Free
Info: (202)782-2200 or nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil
www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum
Tuesday, May 5, 2009
An amazing story
Just saw this on my homepage. The woman who was the first US face transplant patient had a news conference. Brave, brave woman.
Jack McMillen painting
This 1944 painting by Jack McMillen was commissioned by the U.S. government for Walter Reed Army Medical Center as part of the Works Projects Administration (WPA) artists' program of World War II. It illustrates the historical function of the Forest Glen annex of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center as a holding and rehabilitation unit for medical patients, including psychiatric patients, during World War II.
This is a role the Forest Glen annex also played in subsequent wars. Psychiatric patients were identified, and to an extent stigmatized, by wearing maroon hospital clothing. For many years this painting was on display at the Forest Glen annex in Silver Spring, Maryland.
(from a publication by the Borden Institute)
The painting is egg tempera on canvas and measures 7 by 10.5 feet. It now is on display at the museum.
I also found a website while searching for whatever I could find on the artist. It's the New Deal Art Registry, a fun site to browse.
This is a role the Forest Glen annex also played in subsequent wars. Psychiatric patients were identified, and to an extent stigmatized, by wearing maroon hospital clothing. For many years this painting was on display at the Forest Glen annex in Silver Spring, Maryland.
(from a publication by the Borden Institute)
The painting is egg tempera on canvas and measures 7 by 10.5 feet. It now is on display at the museum.
I also found a website while searching for whatever I could find on the artist. It's the New Deal Art Registry, a fun site to browse.
Monday, May 4, 2009
May 6: A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed
A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed
Second in NMHM’s Walter Reed Centennial Year Lecture Series
When: Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Where: Russell Auditorium, National Museum of Health and Medicine
What: Kick off National Nurses Week with "A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed." An informal discussion, featuring the history of nursing at Walter Reed, perspectives on current practices, and thoughts on the future of the Army Nurse Corps, will commemorate 100 years of nursing at Walter Reed.
Presenters: Debbie Cox, former Army Nurse Corps Historian; CPT Jennifer Easley, Medical/Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, WRAMC; LTC Patrick Ahearne, Staff Officer, Office of the Army Nurse Corps, Office of the Army Surgeon General
Cost: Free
Info: (202)782-2200 or nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil
www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum
Second in NMHM’s Walter Reed Centennial Year Lecture Series
When: Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 12:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Where: Russell Auditorium, National Museum of Health and Medicine
What: Kick off National Nurses Week with "A Conversation on Nursing at Walter Reed." An informal discussion, featuring the history of nursing at Walter Reed, perspectives on current practices, and thoughts on the future of the Army Nurse Corps, will commemorate 100 years of nursing at Walter Reed.
Presenters: Debbie Cox, former Army Nurse Corps Historian; CPT Jennifer Easley, Medical/Pediatric Intensive Care Unit, WRAMC; LTC Patrick Ahearne, Staff Officer, Office of the Army Nurse Corps, Office of the Army Surgeon General
Cost: Free
Info: (202)782-2200 or nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil
www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum
American College of Surgery Archives website
Susan Rishworth is the archivist of the American College of Surgery Archives, and when I saw her at AAHM, she noted that they're starting to digitize some of of their collections. Check out their website.
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Delousing WW1 photos and Flickr stats
Sterilizer. 01/21/1919. LeManns [Le Mans?], Sarthe, France. View of sterilizer. Interior. At salvage branch, American Embarkation Center. Delouser.
Our Flickr stats are at 1,307 items / 793,036 views this evening, slowly closing in on 800K, in spite of a series of WW1 delousing photographs that Kathleen put up recently.
German delousing and bathing plant. Interior view. Steam delouser compartments. Andenaide?, Belgium. 11/14/1918.
National Gallery trip today
In the pouring rain. With streets blocked off by DC police - on a Sunday morning no less. But I found this little gem that I hadn't seen before. (And really, it's not out of focus; I wonder if the artist didn't paint it soft like this because of the subject. Just a thought.)
Autopsy at the Hôtel-Dieu by Henri Gervex, 1876.
Autopsy at the Hôtel-Dieu by Henri Gervex, 1876.
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Guide to Collections is now online
It was a long, hard haul, but the 2009 edition of the Guide to the Collections at the National Museum of Health and Medicine (the first update in 10 years) is now online at the Internet Archive. You can download the PDF here.
Applause, please.
Applause, please.
Medical Design Excellence
Thirty-two winners in the 2009 Medical Design Excellence competition have been named.
My two faves are
1. The Medigenic infection control keyboard, manufactured and submitted by Esterline Advanced Input Systems (Coeur d’Alene, ID). The Medigenic infection control keyboard addresses studies showing hospital keyboards to be a source of bacterial cross-contamination. The keyboard helps monitor its own cleaning status. I remember swabbing keyboards with alcohol when I worked in in a medical library and it always kind of makes my skin crawl at the public library when I need to log on. Next thing Medigenic needs to work on is antibacterial mice. They have a high yuck factor too.
2. The Whiz Freedom hygienic urine director, manufactured and submitted by Jbol Ltd. (Oxford, United Kingdom). (Do ya love the name?) The Freedom hygienic urine director is a hydrophobic, antibacterial, and eco-friendly device that enables women to urinate standing or sitting, indoors or outdoors, without undressing. It is suitable for use by incontinent or mobility-impaired users. Ladies, wouldn't you find this eminently useful at least once in your life? Just put it in the trunk with the Send Help banner and the road flares.
My two faves are
1. The Medigenic infection control keyboard, manufactured and submitted by Esterline Advanced Input Systems (Coeur d’Alene, ID). The Medigenic infection control keyboard addresses studies showing hospital keyboards to be a source of bacterial cross-contamination. The keyboard helps monitor its own cleaning status. I remember swabbing keyboards with alcohol when I worked in in a medical library and it always kind of makes my skin crawl at the public library when I need to log on. Next thing Medigenic needs to work on is antibacterial mice. They have a high yuck factor too.
2. The Whiz Freedom hygienic urine director, manufactured and submitted by Jbol Ltd. (Oxford, United Kingdom). (Do ya love the name?) The Freedom hygienic urine director is a hydrophobic, antibacterial, and eco-friendly device that enables women to urinate standing or sitting, indoors or outdoors, without undressing. It is suitable for use by incontinent or mobility-impaired users. Ladies, wouldn't you find this eminently useful at least once in your life? Just put it in the trunk with the Send Help banner and the road flares.
Friday, May 1, 2009
Cover of our new WRAMC photo book
The Government Printing Office sold 72 copies or so today at their stand in the hospital. You can buy it on their website - Walter Reed Army Medical Center Centennial: A Pictorial History – $35.00
Thursday, April 30, 2009
White House on Flickr; can we be far behind?
Keith Axline at Wired says that the White House put up almost 300 photographs on Flickr this week.
"Perhaps we'll be able to post pictures from work again someday...," the photo archivist noted wistfully.
"Perhaps we'll be able to post pictures from work again someday...," the photo archivist noted wistfully.
CSI: Borden Institute
Borden Institute book designer Doug wrote to me today:
We weren't able to get a definite date from the network, but either tonight or next Thursday "CSI - Crime Scene Investigations" will be using one of our books in an episode. Looking at the episode summaries it looks like tonight may be the night.
Lawrence Fishburn and another doctor are s upposed to be consultingwith our "Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare" book in an effort to deal with an outbreak caused by a patient receiving a transplant of an infected organ.
You can watch the broadcast tonight on CBS at 9:00 (8 Central and Mountain) or you can go out to the website http://www.cbs.com/primetime/csi/video/ later and watch the episode "The Gone Dead Train."
We weren't able to get a definite date from the network, but either tonight or next Thursday "CSI - Crime Scene Investigations" will be using one of our books in an episode. Looking at the episode summaries it looks like tonight may be the night.
Lawrence Fishburn and another doctor are s upposed to be consultingwith our "Medical Aspects of Biological Warfare" book in an effort to deal with an outbreak caused by a patient receiving a transplant of an infected organ.
You can watch the broadcast tonight on CBS at 9:00 (8 Central and Mountain) or you can go out to the website http://www.cbs.com/primetime/csi/video/ later and watch the episode "The Gone Dead Train."
New Walter Reed hospital photo book by Archives staff
The Museum’s Archives staff supported the publication of these two new books from the Borden Institute that feature the history of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. See the details and links below for more information.
1) Walter Reed Army Medical Center Centennial: A Pictorial History – “A profusely illustrated history covering the full range of WRAMC’s activities in service to the Army and the Nation.” Hardbound. Over half of the photographs are from the Museum’s collections, and Museum archivist Kathleen Stocker was the photographer for some of the views of the buildings of the current campus.
· S/N: 008-000-01020-0
· Price: $35.00
· Link: http://bookstore.gpo.gov/actions/GetPublication.do?stocknumber=008-000-01020-0
2) Borden’s Dream – “An engaging history-memoir covering WRAMC’s early history, filled with stories about the people and events that shaped its evolution as an institution.” Hardbound.
· S/N: 008-023-00135-9
· Price: $55.00
· Link: http://bookstore.gpo.gov/actions/GetPublication.do?stocknumber=008-023-00135-9
We helped find replacement photographs for some of the missing images in the typescript copy of Borden's Dream.
A display is in the hospital lobby and May 1.
1) Walter Reed Army Medical Center Centennial: A Pictorial History – “A profusely illustrated history covering the full range of WRAMC’s activities in service to the Army and the Nation.” Hardbound. Over half of the photographs are from the Museum’s collections, and Museum archivist Kathleen Stocker was the photographer for some of the views of the buildings of the current campus.
· S/N: 008-000-01020-0
· Price: $35.00
· Link: http://bookstore.gpo.gov/actions/GetPublication.do?stocknumber=008-000-01020-0
2) Borden’s Dream – “An engaging history-memoir covering WRAMC’s early history, filled with stories about the people and events that shaped its evolution as an institution.” Hardbound.
· S/N: 008-023-00135-9
· Price: $55.00
· Link: http://bookstore.gpo.gov/actions/GetPublication.do?stocknumber=008-023-00135-9
We helped find replacement photographs for some of the missing images in the typescript copy of Borden's Dream.
A display is in the hospital lobby and May 1.
Block the flu in style
Core77, the design blog, shows some masks being worn in Mexico. People find a silver lining in any kind of cloud, it seems.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
NLM updates its photo website
Here's the PR, but I saw this at AAHM, and tried it out more today, and it works much better than the old one. And they've gotten rid of those ridiculous watermarks. 60000 images is nothing to be sneezed at either, and they've put some surprising clinical pictures up too (search World War 1 Base Hospital for example).
New look, advanced features for NLM's Images from the History of Medicine (IHM)
The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine announces the launch of a new image platform for its premier database, Images from the History of Medicine (IHM). Using award winning software developed by Luna Imaging, Inc., NLM offers greatly enhanced searching and viewing capabilities to image researchers. Patrons can view search results in a multi-image display, download high resolution copies of their favorite images, zoom in on image details, move images into a patron-defined workspace for further manipulation, and create mediagroups for presenting images and sharing them via e-mail or posting on blogs. With these new capabilities, NLM greatly enhances usability of its image collection, where inspection and comparison of images is often as important as access to bibliographic data. IHM is available online, free of charge, at http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov.
Comprising almost 70,000 images from the Prints and Photographs and other collections held in the History of Medicine Division, IHM is one of the largest image databases in the world dedicated to images of medicine, dentistry, public health, the health professions, and health institutions. The collection includes portraits, photographs, caricatures, genre scenes, posters, and graphic art illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine. Most types of printmaking are represented: woodcuts, engravings, etchings, mezzotints, aquatints, and lithographs. Also included in the collection are illustrations from the
historical book collection. Newly acquired posters and other materials are continually being added to IHM. The collection is administered by the NLM History of Medicine Division.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Library of Medicine is the world's largest library of the health sciences. For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research
Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the
U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal
agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational
medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures
for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and
its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov/.
Ginny Cathcart
Curator, Prints and Photographs
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
For questions, please contact the History of Medicine Division Reference
Desk at hmdref@nlm.nih.gov
New look, advanced features for NLM's Images from the History of Medicine (IHM)
The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine announces the launch of a new image platform for its premier database, Images from the History of Medicine (IHM). Using award winning software developed by Luna Imaging, Inc., NLM offers greatly enhanced searching and viewing capabilities to image researchers. Patrons can view search results in a multi-image display, download high resolution copies of their favorite images, zoom in on image details, move images into a patron-defined workspace for further manipulation, and create mediagroups for presenting images and sharing them via e-mail or posting on blogs. With these new capabilities, NLM greatly enhances usability of its image collection, where inspection and comparison of images is often as important as access to bibliographic data. IHM is available online, free of charge, at http://ihm.nlm.nih.gov.
Comprising almost 70,000 images from the Prints and Photographs and other collections held in the History of Medicine Division, IHM is one of the largest image databases in the world dedicated to images of medicine, dentistry, public health, the health professions, and health institutions. The collection includes portraits, photographs, caricatures, genre scenes, posters, and graphic art illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine. Most types of printmaking are represented: woodcuts, engravings, etchings, mezzotints, aquatints, and lithographs. Also included in the collection are illustrations from the
historical book collection. Newly acquired posters and other materials are continually being added to IHM. The collection is administered by the NLM History of Medicine Division.
Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the National Library of Medicine is the world's largest library of the health sciences. For more information, visit the Web site at http://www.nlm.nih.gov/.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) -- The Nation's Medical Research
Agency -- includes 27 Institutes and Centers and is a component of the
U. S. Department of Health and Human Services. It is the primary federal
agency for conducting and supporting basic, clinical, and translational
medical research, and it investigates the causes, treatments, and cures
for both common and rare diseases. For more information about NIH and
its programs, visit http://www.nih.gov/.
Ginny Cathcart
Curator, Prints and Photographs
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
For questions, please contact the History of Medicine Division Reference
Desk at hmdref@nlm.nih.gov
Papercutting Wow!
This is a papercut by American artist Hunter Stabler called "Baba Yaga Misquotes the Face to Steeleye Span." Not all of his work is anatomical, but it's all fantastic. What skill and patience.
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Swine flu? How about Spanish flu?
Smith Flu 3: Convalescent pneumoconiosis
In these days of our photographs of the WW1 influenza epidemic appearing in papers (uncredited at times, alas), here's a reminder that you can see all of our photographs from two other epidemics on our website - 1918 Influenza Epidemic and 1957 Influenza Epidemic.
58-15573-67 - Child Gargling Broth, Sagamihara Hospital, Japan, August 9, 1957.
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