Bits on medical museums on 2 continents

This is from a first-time visitor to the National Museum of Health and Medicine, who reflects on medical care during the Civil War and today:

 

C'est la guerre: plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

by Donna McNeely Burke

February 21, 2013 · http://theboothintheback.wordpress.com/2013/02/21/cest-la-guerre-plus-ca-change-plus-cest-la-meme-chose/

 

In this article, a writer's favorite museum to revisit is the Welcome:

 

Literary City: Deborah Levy's London

Booker Prize–shortlisted author Deborah Levy takes us on a tour of her literary London. From her cozy garden shed to the medical museum she revisits to why you can wear a bikini on the bus and no one cares, she explores her city with Henry Krempels.

Feb 22, 2013

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/02/22/literary-city-deborah-levy-s-new-york.html

 

Why 'Lincoln' should win an Oscar for Best Picture...

...because there's a brief scene of General Daniel Sickles' leg on display at the Medical Museum. Sickles lost his leg at the battle of Gettysburg. The movie is inaccurate as it shows the leg still fully fleshed - which would have stunk amazingly as the flesh decayed off the bone. Instead Museum prepator Schafhirt would have cut and boiled the flesh off, and then wired the bones together so they looked like this picture.

Another scene of a pit of amputated limbs seems to have been influenced by RB Bontecou's photograph "Field Day." And here's the original label for Surgical Photograph 43, Sickle's "Right Tibia and Fibula comminuted by a Cannon Ball."

Upcoming lecture on Medical Museum in NY

The Living Specimen and 'The Museum of Horrors': Amputation, American Civil War Medicine, & the U.S. Army Medical Museummore

by Naomi Slipp

 

What is a sense of place in relation to corporeal subjectivity? If an amputee leaves limb in one place and occupies body in another, how do we define place as rooted by personal location? Likewise if a nation is divided in two by war, what does it mean for a medical museum to display fragments of the bodies of honorable combatants and amputees? How does a museum shape our sense of self, our ideas about nationhood and place, and aid in collective mourning? I argue that the U.S. Army Medical Museum, founded in 1862 during the American Civil War, represented parts of the human body through practices of institutional display and within the pages of sponsored medical publications as both aesthetic objects and medically educational tools. Through an engagement with representations of corporeal fracture in the writings of S. Weir Mitchell and in period photography, lithography, and the field sketches of Winslow Homer, this paper argues that corporeal fracture - made evident within the walls of the U.S. Army Medical Museum and its publications - complicates fixed notions about placement and displacement during and after the American Civil War making living specimens out of some and offering a location for mourning for a nation. 

 

Location: Binghamton University, Binghamton, NY

Event Date: Apr 26, 2013

Organization: Crossing the Boundaries: Dis/Place, the 21st Annual Art History Graduate Student Union Conference

American Registry of Pathology retains museum staff contract

The American Registry of Pathology has a long, convoluted history, but was regularized in 1976 with a Congressional charter to support the now-defunct Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. During the time I worked in the Museum, they supplied contract labor for about 2/3 of the staff of the Museum. With the awarding of an almost $6 million dollar contract last week, that role will apparently continue.

Index to "Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens" online now

 A PDF scan of the finding aid for the Civil War pictures taken at and published by the Army Medical Museum - Index to "Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens" and Surgical Photographs, 3rd edition (1994) has been put online at https://archive.org/details/IndexToPhotographsOfSurgicalCasesAndSpecimensAndSurgicalPhotographs

African-American Civil War Surgeons in the NLM Collections lecture

You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held Tuesday, 12 February 2013 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., in the Lister Hill Auditorium, National Library of Medicine, Building 38A, Bethesda, MD.  In recognition of African-American History Month, we present:

 

"Oak Leaves on his Shoulders: Discovering African-American Civil War Surgeons in the NLM Collections."

 

Jill L. Newmark

Exhibition Registrar/Traveling Exhibition Service,

History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine

 

During the American Civil War, African American men and women served as medical personnel in hospitals and on the battlefield.  Histories of Civil War Medicine often overlook their participation and contributions, since few personal accounts of black surgeons and nurses exist and materials are often hidden amongst the thousands of Civil War records throughout the country including the National Library of Medicine.  This presentation explores one hospital in Washington, D.C. and follows the journey of discovery that uncovered several African American Civil War surgeons.  The presentation will highlight newly discovered materials from the History of Medicine Division and how they illuminate the story of these surgeons. 

 

All are welcome.

 

Sign language interpretation is provided. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate may contact Stephen Greenberg at 301-435-4995, e-mail greenbes@mail.nih.gov, or the Federal Relay (1-800-877-8339).

 

Due to current security measures at NIH, off-campus visitors are advised to consult the NLM Visitors and Security website:

 

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/visitor.html

 

Sponsored by

NLM's History of Medicine Division

Jeffrey S. Reznick, PhD, Chief

 

Event contact:

Stephen J. Greenberg, MSLS, PhD

Coordinator of Public Services

History of Medicine Division

National Library of Medicine, NIH

301-435-4995

greenbes@mail.nih.gov

 

 

 

Newspaper profile of the Mutter Museum

See Albert Einstein's brain and other matters of medical history ... Allentown Morning Call The nation's finest and oldest medical museum — celebrating its 150th anniversary March 4 — bills itself as "disturbingly informative" and that is ...

Medical Museum in Lincoln movie

I'm told that Sickles' leg and the medical museum briefly feature in the hit movie Lincoln.

Staff departures, catching up again

Anatomical collections curator Franklin Damann is leaving in February to set up a lab.

Apparently the exhibit designer position left by Navjeet Singh has been filled.

Medical illustration and history of medicine at Belskie Museum

The Belskie Museum of Art & Science in northern New Jersey has medical illustration and history of medicine sculptures done by Abram Belskie. I recently visited it and took some photos of his works.

It appears as though they may hold his papers which might make an interesting research project. Belskie worked on a Birth Atlas in 1940. The museum publishes a small booklet about him that's available at the information desk.

New Zealand medical museum opens

Medical 'house of horrors' for Northland New Zealand Herald By Hannah Norton Dr John Swinney, left, and Kiwi North director Stewart Bowden seated in a couple of wheelchairs that feature in the new medical museum.

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The Post interviews Brad Meltzer

Brad Meltzer on his new novel, 'The Fifth Assassin,' and presidential killers

 By Carole Burns,

 Washington Post January 16 2013

 http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/brad-meltzer-on-his-new-novel-the-fifth-assassin-and-presidential-killers/2013/01/15/01baf6dc-5915-11e2-9fa9-5fbdc9530eb9_story.html

Another Brad Meltzer interview on mysterious medical museums

Brad Meltzer Hunts "The Fifth Assassin"
Kiel Phegley,
Comic Book Resources January 15 2013
http://www.comicbookresources.com/?page=article&id=43191

Medical museum spurs thriller idea

Brad Meltzer's new thriller gets Oval Office insight

Mon, Jan 14 2013

By Kurt Anthony Krug

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/14/entertainment-us-books-bradmeltzer-idUSBRE90D15P20130114

"Meltzer explained that the idea for the book came during a visit to the little-known U.S. Army-run National Museum of Health and Medicine near Washington."

Who's buried in John Wilkes Booth's grave?

A deathbed claim Enid News & Eagle Elements of the 16th New York Cavalry tracked Booth and an accomplice to a .... and since have been preserved at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

Staff departures, catching up

Exhibit designer Navjeet Chhina departed the medical museum in the late summer of 2011. He'd like BM's readers to know that.

Another departure is imminent, I'm told.

History of drugs - article of interest

Ancient pills found in shipwreck offer rare insight into early ... KGWN The results offer a peek into the complexity and sophistication of ancient ...

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NLM History of Medicine Lecture

 

You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held Wednesday, 16 January 2013 from 2:00 to 3:00 p.m., in the Lister Hill Auditorium, National Library of Medicine, Building 38A, Bethesda, MD:

 

"Calculating with Mortalities in Restoration London:  John Graunt and his Natural and Political Observations.

 

Kristin Heitman, PhD

Assistant Professor, Department of Medical History

Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Bethesda, MD

 

The paper will discuss Graunt's ground-breaking epidemiological and statistical work with plague and other diseases in 17^th century England. Drawing upon NLM's extensive holdings of Graunt's published works, this lecture will examine the development, evolution, distribution, and reception of Graunt's book through its five editions.

 

All are welcome.

 

Sign language interpretation is provided. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate may contact Stephen Greenberg at 301-435-4995, e-mail greenbes@mail.nih.gov, or the Federal Relay (1-800-877-8339).

 

Due to current security measures at NIH, off-campus visitors are advised to consult the NLM Visitors and Security website:

 

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/about/visitor.html

 

Sponsored by

NLM's History of Medicine Division

Jeffrey S. Reznick, PhD, Chief

 

Event contact:

Stephen J. Greenberg, MSLS, PhD

Coordinator of Public Services

History of Medicine Division

National Library of Medicine, NIH

301-435-4995

greenbes@mail.nih.gov

 

 

 

Jan 16: Comic book & thriller writer Brad Meltzer at Politics & Prose

Why should you care? On his website, Meltzer writes:

 In this case, it began with a government employee who told me that I needed to come to a secret museum that almost no one knew about.  Naturally, I was suspicious, so I asked him what they had at this so-called museum.  Then he told me:  We have pieces of Abraham Lincoln's skull, the bullet that killed him, and even the bones of John Wilkes Booth, if you want to see them.

I take issue with the 'so-called' and 'secret' - the Medical Museum's been open to visitors since the 1860s.

Brad Meltzer - The Fifth Assassin

Start: Jan 16 2013 7:00 pm

End: Jan 16 2013 8:00 pm

Meltzer's latest D.C. thriller features Beecher White, hero of The Inner Circle, as he untangles a plot to kill the president—a plot that goes back to the very first presidential assassination. Researching the four successful attempts on the lives of chief executives, White discovers a long-running conspiracy.

The Fifth Assassin (Hardcover)

By Brad Meltzer

$27.99

ISBN-13: 9780446553971
Availability: Coming Soon - Available for Pre-Order Now
Published: Grand Central Publishing, 1/2013

Staff departures at NMHM

Jim Curley of Historical Collections and Emily Wilson of HDAC will be departing the Museum with the turn of the year. Wilson's contractor position has been advertised.