An unofficial blog about the National Museum of Health and Medicine (nee the Army Medical Museum) in Silver Spring, MD. Visit for news about the museum, new projects, musing on the history of medicine and neat pictures.
Friday, June 27, 2014
Burns Archive and new Morbid Anatomy Museum featured in NY Times
Tuesday, June 24, 2014
NLM Planning Blog launches
The U.S. National Library of Medicine will soon be initiating development of its next long-range plan and, in so doing, welcomes public feedback through its recently-launched "Voyaging to the Future" blog, located at:
http://nlmvoyagingtothefuture.org/
Thank you for your feedback, and for sharing this information with interested colleagues and friends.
Sincerely,
Steve Greenberg
Stephen J. Greenberg, MSLS, PhD
Coordinator of Public Services
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
National Institutes of Health
Department of Health and Human Services
Bethesda, MD
Tuesday, June 10, 2014
Southern California Medical Museum moves to Pomona
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Southern California Medical Museum moves to Pomona A 1740 microscope will be among the display at the Southern California Medical Museum in Pomona. Jennifer Cappuccio Maher — Staff ...
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Monday, June 9, 2014
Burns Archive in New York Magazine 6/9/14
New York Magazine:
http://nymag.com/health/bestdoctors/2014/cutting-edge-medicine-2014-6/
All 6 "Navy Medicine at War" World War II films are online
Navy Medicine at War: Trial by Fire (2010 version)
This installment recounts the "day that will live in infamy" through the stories of Navy medical personnel who witnessed the tragic events at Pearl Harbor.
Navy Medicine at War: Guests Of The Emperor
Pearl Harbor was just the beginning of a Japanese rampage throughout the Pacific. With nothing to stop their expanding empire, the enemy rolled through the Pacific conquering at will. This installment of the film series tells the tragic story of those who fought to defend Guam, Bataan, and Corregidor against the Japanese invasion. Their heroism throughout the following years in brutal captivity, under extremely trying conditions exemplifies the enduring values of Navy Medicine.
Navy Medicine at War: Battle Station Sick Bay
After the battle of Midway, even though the pendulum had swung in favor of the United States, final victory was many campaigns and many, many lives away. Throughout the next three years, Navy medicine would accompany the carriers, battleships, cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and thousands of other vessels on the long bloody road to Tokyo. As crewman aboard these ships, physicians, dentists, and hospital corpsmen would man battle stations and sick bays during the battle—and the lulls in between. And they would do what Navy medical personnel had always done—treating torn, burned, and bleeding bodies, and returning men to duty.
Navy Medicine at War: Navy Medicine At Normandy, D-Day June 6, 1944
Although less well known, Navy medicine made important contributions in the Atlantic, most notably in the Normandy campaign. The physicians and hospital corpsmen of the 6th Naval Beach Battalion are highlighted in this installment.
Navy Medicine at War: Stepping Stones To Tokyo
The fifth installment in the six-part Navy Medicine at War film series chronicles the Navy medical experience with the Marine Corps' island-hopping campaign during the first three years of the war.
Navy Medicine at War: Final Victory
"Final Victory" is the last installment of the six-part World War II film series, "Navy Medicine at War." The film tells the story of the war's final campaign and aftermath - the bloody fight to take Okinawa, the dress rehearsal for the invasion of the Japanese home islands, the dropping of the two atomic bombs, Japan's surrender, and the liberation of the prisoners of war.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
British mental health museum reopens
Mental Health Museum reopens asylum collection at NHS home in Wakefield
http://www.culture24.org.uk//science-and-nature/medicine/art482053-Mental-Health-Museum-reopens-asylum-collection-NHS-home-Wakefield
Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Clyster found in maritime archeology
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Urethral syringe used in 19th century venereal treatment declared best archaeological find Alan Humphries, the Librarian of the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds, identified this as a urethral syringe used to treat ailments in men by injecting ...
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Monday, May 19, 2014
BUMED's historians upload 2000th item to Medical Heritage Library
After slightly more than a year of uploading material to the Medical
Heritage Library, the US Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery's 2000th
item appeared online today. "A Series of Reports to the Nursing Division
of the activities of the Nurse Corps Officers serving aboard the U.S.
Naval Hospital in the Repose"* is now easily available for research. The
reports from CDRs Angelica Vitillo and M.T. Kovacevich back to Captain
Ruth Erickson, Director of the Navy Nurse Corps, and her successor CAPT
Veronica Bulshefski date from 8 November 1965 to 2 December 1966. They
are in turns informative, chatty and sad.
"Our first direct casualty which arrived Saturday, the nineteenth, was
a nineteen year old bilateral mid-thigh amputee who to date has received
over 45 pints of blood." (28 February 1966)
"The improvements we have initiated in our individual staterooms have
contributed to maintaining a high state of moral among the nurses, One
of the base shops at Hunters Point allowed us to misappropriate an
assortment of very colorful and feminine looking bedspreads for our
rooms." (13 December 1965)
"Death claimed the life of a very young man who had extensive chest
wounds on Monday, the seventh and a thirty three year old arm amputee
with other extensive wounds on Tuesday the eighth. Some of our young
nurses are feeling these losses acutely." (9 March 1966)
These letters join a soon-to-be complete set of over 1000 issues of 70
years of Navy Medicine magazine**; oral histories with veterans of World
War 2, Korea and Vietnam;*** a growing collection of audiovisuals
including one on the Navy's humanitarian efforts after the Vietnam
War****; and many other items.
*
https://archive.org/details/USSReposeSeriesOfReportsToTheNursingDivisionOfTheActivitiesOfTheNurseCorpsOffice
**
https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Ausnavybumedhistoryoffi
ce%20AND%20subject%3A%22Navy%20Medicine%20magazine&sort=-publicdate
***
https://archive.org/search.php?query=collection%3Ausnavybumedhistoryoffi
ce%20oral%20history&sort=-publicdate
**** https://archive.org/details/THELUCKYFEWWMV91280x72016x9
A small selection of our photographs may be found on Flickr at
https://www.flickr.com/photos/navymedicine/
Michael Rhode
Archivist / Curator
US Navy BUMED Office of Medical History
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
ALHHS Publication award goes to NMHM archivist Eric Boyle
ALHHS awards for 2014. Winners were recognized at the annual ALHHS
business meeting, held on May 8, 2014 at the American College of
Surgeons in Chicago, IL.
The ALHHS Publication award went to Eric W. Boyle for his book, Quack
Medicine: A History of Combating Health Fraud in Twentieth-Century
America (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013). Throughout the 20th
century, anti-quackery crusaders investigated, exposed, and attempted
to regulate allegedly fraudulent therapeutic approaches to health and
healing under the banner of consumer protection and a commitment to
medical science. Boyle's book reveals how efforts to establish an
exact border between quackery and legitimate therapeutic practices and
medications have largely failed, and details the reasons for this
failure.
The AlHHS Online Resource award went to the Waring Historical Library
Curator Susan Hoffius and Digital Archivist Jennifer Welch for their
on-line exhibit of the Porcher Medicinal Garden. The website and its
corresponding physical-location garden serve to increase public
awareness of the holdings of the Earing Historical Library and,
specifically the collection of Dr. F. Peyre Porcher.
The ALHHS Merit Award was given to Dr. and Mrs. Adam G.N. Moore for
their support of the collections of the Center for the History of
Family Medicine (CHFM). In 2012, the Moores donated more than 600
items including rare books, pamphlets, periodicals, and ephemera from
their personal library to create the new Adam G.N. Moore, MD,
collection in the History of Family Medicine at the CHFM.
Please join us in congratulating our award recipients for their
outstanding work.
- The 2014 ALHHS Awards Committee (Eric Luft, Rachel Howell,
and Judith Wiener, chair)
Monday, May 5, 2014
New medical museum in Louisiana
Willis-Knighton unveils WK Innovation Center The expansion also includes the Talbot Museum, a medical museum that displays the history of the Willis-Knighton system created in 2004. Created ... | ||||||
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Wednesday, April 30, 2014
Indiana Historical Medical Museum theft
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Police discover more items in stolen brains investigation ... brains and other artifacts from the Indiana Historical Medical Museum after police recovered several boxes of allegedly stolen surgical instruments. | |
May 7: Lecture on wounded Civil War soldiers at Smithsonian
Chapel Hill
"Visualizing 'The Real War': Disabled Civil War Veterans and the U.S. Army Surgeon General's Office"
4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Smithsonian American Art Museum's McEvoy Auditorium, located at 8th and G Streets NW, Washington, D.C.
Friday, April 25, 2014
NMHM mentioned in article on the Corcoran Gallery
Wednesday, April 23, 2014
NMHM's embryology collection in Bull. of History of Medicine
From: Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume 88, Number 1, Spring 2014
pp. 132-160 | 10.1353/bhm.2014.0002
Summary:
Between 1932 and 1963 University of Pittsburgh anatomist Davenport Hooker, Ph.D., performed and filmed noninvasive studies of reflexive movement on more than 150 surgically aborted human fetuses. The resulting imagery and information would contribute substantially to new visual and biomedical conceptions of fetuses as baby-like, autonomous human entities that emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. Hooker's methods, though broadly conforming to contemporary research practices and views of fetuses, would not have been feasible later. But while Hooker and the 1930s medical and general public viewed live fetuses as acceptable materials for nontherapeutic research, they also shared a regard for fetuses as developing humans with some degree of social value. Hooker's research and the various reactions to his work demonstrate the varied and changing perspectives on fetuses and fetal experimentation, and the influence those views can have on biomedical research.
Friday, March 14, 2014
Last 'Radium Girl' dead?
Mae Keane, Whose Job Brought Radium to Her Lips, Dies at 107
By WILLIAM YARDLEY
Mrs. Keane, one of the so-called radium girls, was employed at the Waterbury Clock Company in the 1920s when a relatively new material, radium, was used.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Heard embryology models at Medical Museum
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Local man's father honored with national embryology exhibition ... and to attend an exhibit on Tuesday that celebrates their father's work in research embryology at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
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Sunday, February 23, 2014
Army Medical Museum's Shufeldt was an unattractive character
Beyond this article, which has to be read to be believed, he was a fervent racist. | ||||||
Museum Files: Audubon legacy outshines scandal
In 1882, Shufeldt was named curator in the Army Medical Museum. He retired in 1891 with a disability for heart disease. Shufeldt had a thirst for ...
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Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Dr Damann speaks to students about forensic anthropology
Scientists share experiences with students to encourage interest in ... Franklin Damann, forensic anthropologist at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, Silver Spring, spoke to students at Rockville High School ... | |
Friday, January 24, 2014
Newly-created digital archives from African-American psychiatric hospital
Digital Archive to House 100 Years of Historical Documents from World's First Black Mental Institution; UT Scholar Tells Forgotten Story of African-American Psychiatric Patients
Released: 1/23/2014 12:00 PM EST
Source Newsroom: University of Texas at Austin
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Caricature at the Wellcome Library is online
Artists' Caricatures Show The Macabre History Of Medicine
The Huffington Post | By Sara GatesPosted: 01/22/2014http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/22/history-of-medicine-photos-wellcome-images_n_4645670.html