Well, sadly the Museum outlasted the AFIP

September sees the end of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. It grew out of the Museum during World War II, and took the Museum over after the War, but due to BRAC it's been closed and some of its functions divided. Bits of the AFIP's tenure remain of course - lots of AFIP numbered specimens are in the Museum, and lots of former Museum specimens will be in the Joint Pathology Center. The numbering systems remain intertwined. And of course this blog is named for a remark by an AFIP head.

I found it in a quote from one of the former curators. World War II confirmed the Army Medical Museum's primary role in pathology consultation. James Ash, the curator during the war and a pathologist, noted, "Shortly after the last war, more concerted efforts were instituted to concentrate in the Army Medical Museum the significant pathologic material occurring in Army installations." He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

National Public Radio's Walter Reed series

NPR writes in, "Thanks again for all of your help with this  As the different stories of the six-part series air this week, they will be added to this page: http://www.npr.org/series/139793002/closing-walter-reed"

Topics on the Pathology of Protozoan and Invasive Arthropod Diseases - last AFIP publication

Topics on the Pathology of Protozoan and Invasive Arthropod Diseases - the last AFIP publication - is available on the web for downloading for free.

 

Here's the description:

 

By: Wayne M. Meyers; Adolfo Firpo; Douglas J. Wear;

This e-book, Topics on the Pathology of Protozoan and Invasive Arthropod Diseases, was originally conceived as a companion volume of our earlier book, Pathology of Infectious Diseases, Helminthiases, published in the year 2000. During the production of the current volume, however, administrative circumstances were not conducive to its publication as a hardcover book. We are pleased nevertheless to be able to present this treatise on protozoan and invasive arthropod related diseases electronically. As such, a great advantage is that it will be available freely to a wider audience; not just to the so-called developed world, but to less affluent and more remote areas-- in fact to anyone with access to the internet worldwide. This publication comes at an appropriate time when there is ever increasing attention being given to the neglected tropical diseases of this world, and as world travel is increasing. Pathologists highly experienced in many of the diseases discussed here are often not locally available, increasing the likelihood that accurate diagnoses will be unduly delayed.

Direct download link

New article on medical museum move

Medical museum prepares move from Walter Reed campus

By Caitlin Fairchild
Government Executive August 26, 2011
http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=48630&dcn=todaysnews

Walter Reed Army Medical Center's end covered by Washington Post

Two military medical icons become one - an article about the closing, and, Final Walter Reed patients move- a photo gallery of images.

Build your own medical museum

The NY Times is reporting on the auction of a medical history collection.

THE GROG, Summer 2011-- A Journal of Navy Medical History and Culture

Dear Colleagues,

It is with great pleasure that we present the Summer 2011 edition of THE GROG.  In this edition we examine the Navy Medical Department's role in the Coal Medical Survey of 1947 and how it came about. We follow this with a spirited assortment of original articles including Dr. James Alsop's look at Navy hospital care in 1812, Jan Herman's  account of working in documentary films, Leanne Gradijan's statistical report of physicians in the Civil War and much more.  As always we hope you enjoy your humble tour of Navy medicine's past.

THE GROG is accessible through the link below.  If you prefer a PDF version to be sent directly to your inbox please let us know.  For all those who have already requested to be put on the PDF mailing list a  low resolution version will be sent  to you shortly.

Link to THE GROG, Summer 2011
http://issuu.com/thegrogration/docs/the_grog_summer_2011

Very Respectfully,

André

André B. Sobocinski
Deputy Historian and Publications Mgr.
Office of Medical History (M00H)
Dr. Benjamin Rush Education and Conference Ctr.
Navy Medicine Institute for the Medical Humanities  (NMI)
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED)
Tel: 202.762.3244
Fax: 202.762.3380
E-Mail: andre.sobocinski@med.navy.mil

Got Grog?

Summer 2011
http://issuu.com/thegrogration/docs/the_grog_summer_2011

Spring 2011
 http://issuu.com/thegrogration/docs/the_grog_spring_2011

Museum public program photos online

 

They've been going to the Museum's website at http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum/events/recent_programs.html and are taken by new Museum photographer Matthew Breitbart.

Rhode's new assignment details

I'll be at the Office of the Medical Historian which is described here, setting up their archives, describing records and making them more accessible to researchers including 12,000 BUMED images that were scanned by AFIP and the Museum, some of which can be seen on the Flickr page.

FW: Rhode leaving medical museum

Dear colleagues and friends,

It is with distinct melancholy that I will be resigning my post as chief archivist and leaving the National Museum of Health and Medicine on September 9, 2011 for a promotion as archivist in the US Navy Bureau of
Medicine's Office of Medical History (which is also in Washington, DC). It has been a pleasure and an honor to have built and led the Otis Historical Archives for the Museum and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology over the past twenty-two years. I trust I have lived up to museum curator George Otis' inspiring example.

Michael Rhode, Archivist
Otis Historical Archives
National Museum of Health and Medicine
Washington, DC 20306-6000
202-782-2212
http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum
http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum/collections/archives/archives.html

Nature on 'Death of a pathology centre'

Death of a pathology centre: Shelved Nature.com It was the beginning of the Army Medical Museum ( see slideshow 'A diary of death & disease'). Hammond wanted to collect and catalogue the specimens that ... Nature.com

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Museum volunteer Regina Hunt photo featured in Fort Detrick story

Click here to see.

City Paper on Walter Reed's closing

Fast Times at Walter Reed

by Lydia DePillis on Aug. 4, 2011

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2011/08/04/fast-times-at-walter-reed/

 

Former Museum Assistant Director of Collections wins award

James TH Connor, the former Museum Assistant Director of Collections has won the Dr. Wallace Ingram award at Memorial University Newfoundland.

Creative use of Museum's Civil War photos at Flickr

Here's a nice research use of the Civil War pictures we've been putting online -

 

From: Brendan Hamilton

 

I've recently been looking through the fantastic gallery of Civil War medical photographs you and your colleagues have been putting up on Flickr, and I got the idea of writing up brief profiles of the soldiers in them and posting them on my blog: http://vanishedhand.blogspot.com/

As a Civil War geek and poet, I'm more interested in the human side than the clinical info., so I thought I'd dig through the muster rolls, census info, etc., to try to paint some picture of who these people are. A macabre effort but that's what grabs me. I've only written up one soldier so far but I intend to do more in the coming weeks.

- his one soldier is Frederick Bentley.

Medical Museum Science Café, featuring author Matthew Algeo

When: Tuesday, July 12, 2011, 6:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m.

Where: Silver Spring Civic Center, Fenton Room
One Veterans Place, Silver Spring, MD 20910
http://www.silverspringdowntown.com

What: In "The President Is a Sick Man," author and journalist Matthew Algeo offers the first full account of a monumental political scandal that shook the Gilded Age. In July 1893, President Grover Cleveland boarded a yacht somewhere off Long Island Sound and seemingly vanished for five days. What the American public did not know was that a dream team of surgeons had been assembled on the boat to remove a cancerous growth from Cleveland’s jaw (the Museum has histological slides with samples of the tumor). When a reporter attempted to expose the truth behind the president’s disappearance, he was immediately discredited by White House staff who had decided Americans could not know the truth.

Join this discussion about public perception and presidential health. Copies of the book will be available for purchase; a book signing will follow.

Presented by the National Museum of Health and Medicine

Cost: Free

July 13: NLM History of Medicine Seminar - Cassedy Memorial Lecture

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE
History of Medicine Division Seminar
Fourth Annual James H. Cassedy Memorial Lecture
Wednesday, July 13, 2011, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m.
Lister Hill Auditorium
NLM Building 38A
Bethesda, MD

"The Image of Modern Medicine: Aesthetic Belonging and the American Doctor, 1880-1950."
John Harley Warner, Yale University
Distinguished scholar John Harley Warner, Avalon Professor and Chair, History of Medicine, and Professor of History, Yale University, has long studied the cultural and social history of medicine in 19th and 20th century America.  This presentation will examine clinical practice, orthodox and alternative healing, the multiple meanings of scientific medicine, and the interactions among identity, narrative, and aesthetic in the grounding of modern medicine.

All are welcome.

For future programs, consult the NLM History of Medicine Division Seminar webpage:

www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/happening/seminars/index.html

Yakovlev Collection Day One Packing

 

Where are we?

Blog posts are getting fewer and further between because the packing of the museum for its move to Forest Glen, MD is well under way. Historical Collections is largely packed up, as is the Human Developmental Anatomy Center. Anatomical Collection’s specimens in formalin are about half packed, and the Archives is due to be packed mid-month. We’re moving to a new command so our email and Internet addresses all are changing too. So our access to everything is lessened for a few months, but please bear with us.