A Repository for Bottled Monsters

The Department of Art & Art History at Georgetown University, in collaboration with the History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine (National Institutes of Health), presents an interdisciplinary symposium dedicated to critically and creatively examining medical objects, broadly conceived. Presenters from diverse scholarly and professional backgrounds will undertake close readings of medical objects in a variety of media and genres—book illustrations, paintings, sculptures, pamphlets, photographs, instruments, motion pictures and more—from the collections of the National Library of Medicine, Georgetown University, and other repositories. Our aim is to encourage new ways of engaging with objects that sit at the intersection between art and medicine. The outcome, we hope, will be a broadened conception of how the visual and notions of visuality function or falter in medical practice past and present. The program can be found online at http://art.georgetown.edu/story/1242756485205.html

All welcome but numbers are limited. Please register by emailing: keren.hammerschlag@georgetown.edu

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Sept 2: NLM History of Medicine Lecture

Dear Colleagues,

You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held on Tuesday, September2, from 2pm to 3pm in the Lister Hill Auditorium, Building 38A, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. Dr. Julia Hallam, University of Liverpool, will help celebrate the opening of NLM's newest exhibition, Pictures of Nursing: the Zwerdling Postcard Collection. The project encompasses a special display, future traveling banner exhibition, an online presence with education resources, and a digital gallery highlighting 585 postcards from the Zwerdling collection of postcards about nurses and nursing. Dr. Hallam will discuss her work with the collection and the exhibit.

All are welcome.

Sign language interpretation is provided. Individuals with disabilities who need reasonable accommodation to participate may contact Kenneth Koyle at 301-496-5407, e-mail ken.koyle@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

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Pictures from NMHM's Medical Heritage Library submissions are now on Flickr

Pictures from NMHM's Medical Heritage Library submissions are now on Flickr. This includes the Civil War-era Pleasants photograph album, and presumably eventually ALL the images in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion.

Monday, August 18, 2014

Two Army Medical Museum letters from J.J. Woodward

Today, I ran across a photocopy from some old research I'd done, and experimented with putting it online at the Medical Heritage Library. If there's interest, I can scan more.

Letter from J. J. Woodward to Bowditch on Army Medical Museum - Army Medical Museum
Dr. Joseph Woodward writes to Dr. Bowditch expressing his opinion on the use of the medical museum in determining the causes of disease. He also expresses appreciation for the Surgeon General's Library. Original in National Museum of Health and Medicine's OHA 28: Curatorial Records: Woodward Letterbooks.

Letter from J.J. Woodward To Joseph Henry On Comparative Anatomy Books - Army Medical Museum
Dr. Joseph Woodward writes to Joseph Henry of the Smithsonian Institution asking for books on animals for the Museum's comparative anatomy collection with the books to be added to the Surgeon General's Library. Original in National Museum of Health and Medicine's OHA 28: Curatorial Records: Woodward Letterbooks.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Johns Hopkins considering a history of medicine certificate

from Christine Ruggere, Associate Director, Institute of the History of Medicine & Curator, Historical Collection at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine:

The Department of the History of Medicine of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine is currently developing a set of online courses in the history of medicine in order to provide greater access to the study of that subject. Mapped out over time, the courses will also be part of a larger project creating an online certificate program and an online Masters' degree in the history of medicine. One of our main goals is to provide graduate-level teaching in the field to interested health care students/professionals and others who are otherwise unable to take a year or two away from their work to pursue a degree in person or who wish to take just a few courses at their own convenience. In order to have our degree programs certified by the state of Maryland, we are required to submit results from a survey indicating any interest in these programs. It is a very short, quick survey: http://www.johnshopkinssurveys.com/se.ashx?s=705E3F16491130AA.

Friday, July 25, 2014

Medical waste dump reported near National Museum of Health and Medicine


	Army floats compromise on medical waste area Gazette.Net: Maryland Community News Online The area also is near the U.S. National Museum of Health and Medicine. The latest proposal involves installing about 2,450 feet of chain-link fencing ...

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

Thai medical museum in the news

Bangkok Post

'Dark tourism' creeps out Thailand

Bangkok Post

Originally established as a teaching venue for the school's medical students, Siriraj Medical Museum today is increasingly better known as a tourist ...

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

A new book on World War II VD posters is out


7.16.14 / THE ART OF VD PROTECTION http://www.printmag.com/daily-heller/the-art-of-vd-protection-posters-of-world-war-ii/ The National Museum of Health and Medicine has a large collection of b&w copy photographs of these type of posters.

Tuesday, July 15, 2014

Dale Smith of USUHS interviewed on NLM site

The Anatomy Acts and the Social Contract

by Circulating Now
http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2014/07/15/the-anatomy-acts-and-the-social-contract/

Dr. Dale Smith spoke today at the National Library of Medicine on "Anatomy Acts and the Shaping of the American Medical Profession's Social Contract." Dr. Smith is a Professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences Department of Military and Emergency Medicine. Circulating Now interviewed him about his work.

Monday, July 14, 2014

The Grog, A Journal of Navy Medical History and Culture (Issue 40)

It is with great pleasure that we present to you the latest "ration" of The
Grog, a Journal of Navy Medical History and Culture. In this edition, we
offer you original stories about: Navy Medicine's forgotten hero of the
Second Battle of Fort Fisher; a Navy nurse who was awarded the prestigious
St. Anne Medal in 1919; Navy's World War II hospital on the Emerald Isle;
Navy Medicine's role with the Marine Corps in World War I; a medical
entomologist's tale of hope after suffering great loss; and a Navy
physiologist-turned dentist's incredible mission to locate a missing
aircraft with the aid of a Deep Submersible Vehicle. We bolster this
literary line-up with the usual assortment of historical sidebars, trivia as
well as a book review by our own Col. Ginn.

The Grog is accessible through the links below.

http://issuu.com/thegrogration/docs/the_grog__issue_40__2014
https://archive.org/details/TheGrogIssue402014

As always we hope you enjoy this tour on the high seas of Navy Medicine's past!

André B. Sobocinski
Historian
Communications Directorate (M09B7)
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED)

19th century publication on teeth in the Army Medical Museum

A critical examination of the teeth of several races, including one hundred and fifty moundbuilders, selected from the collection of the Army Medical Museum at Washington, D. C

https://archive.org/details/criticalexaminat00bett

Tuesday, July 8, 2014

July 15: NLM History of Medicine Lecture

You are cordially invited to the next NLM History of Medicine lecture, to be held on Tuesday, July 15, from 2pm to 3pm in the Lister Hill Auditorium, Building 38A, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD. As its Annual James H. Cassedy Memorial Lecture, we are proud to present Dale Smith, PhD, Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, who will speak on "Anatomy Acts and the Shaping of the American Medical Profession's Social Contract."

Since the time of the Hippocratics, physicians had been offering society a community of practitioners committed to patient care, high moral values, and lifelong learning, but societies across the ancient world and early modern Europe were reluctant to set physicians apart. In the early United States, the exceptionalism of physicians was less widely acknowledged because of the Jacksonian emphasis on self-sufficiency. Colonial licensure laws which tried to register qualified practitioners were repealed. Medical education was voluntary, variable, and completely self-funded; schools were owned by the faculty and operated as proprietary ventures. The medical sects – botanic, hydropathic, homeopathic – were often accepted but had little in the way of professional discipline. Physicians wanted to be set apart as a profession, but American society did not accept the offer of professionalization until after the Civil War, when 'regular' physicians reaped the benefits of their wartime service. Ultimately the American system of licensure based on examination was instituted by states and affirmed by the courts. In return for the promise of good medicine today and better medicine tomorrow, the profession of medicine obtained legal protection, subsidized education, and socially supported and separately financed practice venues. As part of this transformation, anatomy acts were passed by the individual states: they were, in many cases, the first move to affirm a "social contract" between physicians and the communities they served.

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

Thursday, July 3, 2014

My Visit to The National Museum of Health and Medicine article


	My Visit to The National Museum of Health and Medicine Canada Free Press The National Museum of Health and Medicine is housed in its new facility in Silver Springs, Maryland. Originally located in the former Walter Reed ...

Friday, June 27, 2014

New World War 1 resource online

WWI Pamphlets 1913-1920

A collection of WWI Pamphlets 1913-1920 contributed by Columbia University Libraries

https://archive.org/details/butlerlibrarywwipamphlets

430 pamphlets including medical ones.

Burns Archive and new Morbid Anatomy Museum featured in NY Times

The Dark Side Gets Its Due

The Morbid Anatomy Museum Opens in Brooklyn

By JENNIFER SCHUESSLER JUNE 26, 2014

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/27/nyregion/the-morbid-anatomy-museum-opens-in-brooklyn.html

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

301-435-4995

greenbes@mail.nih.gov

Who are we?

Mike Rhode was the chief archivist of the Museum from 1989-2011, and is the founder of this blog. I maintain an interest in the course of the museum, and will be posting relevant information.

The Army Medical Museum was founded in 1862 during the American Civil War. After World War II, a parent-child relationship was inverted and the Museum became part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Since then, the Museum has moved around Washington, stopping for years in Ford's Theatre, and on the National Mall where the building it shared with the National Library of Medicine once stood, until it was demolished in 1968 for the Hirshhorn Museum. For 35 years it was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and now is in Silver Spring, MD.

So what about that blog name?

It's historical. 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."

After the war, it evolved into the tri-service Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Pages

Sunday, October 5, 2014

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Monday, September 8, 2014