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.
Tuesday, January 12, 2016
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
St. Elizabeth lantern slides from NMHM and NARA
St. Elizabeths Stories: Turning the Lights Back On With Long-Forgotten Images
Friday, October 16, 2015
NMHM's former location becomes lede to New Yorker story
Thursday, September 24, 2015
Barts Pathology Museum article
Body Snatchers And Abnormalities In Jars: A History Of Barts Pathology Museum
Friday, August 21, 2015
NMHM to move under Defense Health Agency
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3 US Organizations Set To Join Defense Health Agency NMHM was founded as the Army Medical Museum in 1862 and is home to a National Historic Landmark collection of more than 25 million objects. | ||||||||
Thursday, August 6, 2015
Robert Osborn-illustrated booklet online
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Lincoln conspirators skull's reburial, 20 years ago
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-exhumed-skull-of-a-would-be-assassin-and-its-long-journey-home/2015/07/03/cd2e7bd0-1ff2-11e5-84d5-eb37ee8eaa61_story.html
Thursday, June 25, 2015
National Library of Medicine historian Michael Sappol on WWII animation
The Inside Story
Circulating Now on June 25, 2015
By Michael Sappol
Inside Out, Pixar's latest hit animated feature, is mainly set on the inside of a young girl's brain. Riley, an eleven-year-old, is operated by a committee of characters, each representing an emotion, who collectively try to deal with her troubles at school and home. It seems like a very contemporary way to depict consciousness, and critical reaction from psychologists and neuroscientists has been largely favorable.
But, strangely, the film echoes an older and quite obscure piece of animated cartooning: a 1944 movie made during wartime for the U.S. Coast Guard, The Inside Story. That film, now preserved in the historical audiovisual collection of the National Library of Medicine, deals with the typical emotional problems suffered by men entering the military service and argues that psychotherapeutic approaches may help.
Continued at http://circulatingnow.nlm.nih.gov/2015/06/25/the-inside-story/
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Civil War medicine by National Library of Medicine historians
Six Ways the Civil War Changed American Medicine
150 years ago, the historic conflict forced doctors to get creative and to reframe the way they thought about medicine
Wednesday, June 3, 2015
Buffalo medical museum featured on tv
Fascinating, strange collection to discover at UB's Medical Museum
June 3: Civil War medicine presentation at National Archives
William G. McGowan Theater & YouTube
Civil War Medicine & Surgery
Archives specialist Rebecca Sharp will discuss The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861-1865. This published source contains information about Civil War medical and surgical procedures as well as case studies. Video | Captioning | Presentation slides | Handout 1 | Handout 2.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Fwd: [caduceus-l] CFP: A Medical History of the Vietnam War
Presentations on all facets of medicine and healthcare related to the Vietnam War are welcome to include historical understandings of military medicine as practiced by all participants and in all geographic regions, the repercussions of the war on the practice of medicine, medicine in various campaigns, medical care outside of Vietnam, effects on the home front, postwar medical issues, mental health issues, and related topics.
Conference organizers welcome both individual presentation proposals as well as preorganized panel proposals that include two to three presentations. Conference sessions will
follow the standard 90 minute format to include one hour for presentations and 30 minutes for questions and discussion. Presentations by veterans are especially encouraged as are presentations by graduate students. All of the conference organizers are partners with the Department of Defense's Vietnam War Commemoration. In keeping with that partnership, there will be a dignified event to thank veterans for their service.
Proposal submission deadline is October 31, 2015. Please send a 250 word abstract and separate two-page CV/resume to steve.maxner@ttu.edu. If submitting a panel proposal, please include separate abstracts for each proposed presentation and CVs/resumes for each speaker.
Thank you for your interest in participating in this conference.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Dick Mulvaney's polio vaccination campaign remembered
A '50s children's crusade, aka Amid debate about vaccines, polio remembered as a scourge defeated
Washington Post April 22 2015
Monday, April 20, 2015
Morton's Medical Bibliography, Fifth Edition (Garrison-Morton), is now freely available online
HistoryofScience.com
HistoryofInformation.com
BookHistory.net
Jeremy Norman & Co., Inc.
Mail: P.O. Box 867
Novato, CA 94948
UPS, FedEx, DHL:
936-B Seventh St., PMB 238
Novato, CA 94945-3010
Friday, April 17, 2015
Florabel Mullick, AFIP's last director, has passed away
A 1994 oral history with Dr. Mullick can be found on the Medical Heritage Library.
Thursday, April 16, 2015
AMEDD Historian #10 out now
Welcome to the another issue of the "AMEDD Historian;" an electronic
history journal designed to bring you articles and pictures on Army Medicine
history. We want your contributions so if you have an idea for an Army
Medicine historical article, please write it up and submit it to us in the
electronic address in the "AMEDD Historian."
The "AMEDD Historian" will be published 4 times per year (quarterly),
so we'll need your input NLT 1 Mar, 7 Jun, 6 Sep. This journal will be
success with your contributions and I look forward to receiving your
articles on our proud heritage.
Here is the link:
http://history.amedd.army.mil/newsletters/AMEDD_history_newsletterNo10.pdf.
ROBERT S. DRISCOLL
Command Historian and
Chief, AMEDD Center of History and Heritage
US Army Medical Command
2748 Worth Road, Ste 48
Fort Sam Houston, TX 78234-6003
Wednesday, April 15, 2015
Thursday, April 2, 2015
"Doctoring the Civil War" lecture April 8 in North Carolina
The Health Sciences Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill invites you to a lecture by Shauna Devine, Ph.D., of the University of Western Ontario, who will examine the ways the American Civil War transformed medicine through a series of never before published medical photographs from Civil War hospitals and laboratories.
The lecture will be held April 8 at 5:30 p.m. in the open event space on the second floor of the Health Sciences Library.
Learn more about the lecture and speaker. RSVP to Anne Dudley at dudleyac@email.unc.edu.
Sunday, March 29, 2015
New Lincoln exhibit at NMHM press release online
Medical Care During President Lincoln's Final Hours Commemorated in New Exhibit
http://www.medicalmuseum.mil/index.cfm?p=media.news.article.2015.03262015
Friday, March 27, 2015
NMHM reports new finding aids and updated guide to collections
The National Museum of Health and Medicine has recently posted over 100 new finding aids, as well as a new 254-page guide to its collections at www.medicalmuseum.mil/assets/documents/collections/archives/2014/Guide-to-Collections-2014.pdf. The breadth of medical subjects highlighted in these new finding aids extends to the history of forensic medicine, entomology, electron microscopy, medical illustrations, nursing, penicillin research, photo-micrography, physical therapy, pathology, and yellow fever. For those interested in the history of the Army Medical Museum, new finding aids also chronicle its early work. Some particularly rich collections related to these subjects, which may be of particular interest to archivists and librarians in the history of the health sciences, are described below.
Forensic Medicine:
The Stahl Collection (OHA 315.5) contains materials from the first formal resident in forensic pathology at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), and the first Navy officer to enter that field, Dr. Charles J. Stahl. Appointed as an approved pathologist for the State of Maryland while completing his residency in the early 1960s, Stahl conducted autopsies in Montgomery County and Baltimore during off duty hours. After finishing his residency, Stahl then spent two years in Guam as the Chief of Laboratory Service and Deputy Medical Examiner from 1963-1964. In 1965, he began his assignment as the Chief of Forensic Pathology at the AFIP, where he remained for the next ten years. During this period, Stahl led the largest department at the Institute, helped develop an extensive educational program, and consulted on a number of high profile cases including the Vietnam War crimes that inspired the film Casualties of War, the deaths of three NASA astronauts at Cape Kennedy, and the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. After stints at the Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, the Department of Veteran Affairs in Tennessee, and Wright State University
Stahl became the Deputy Medical Inspector for the Naval Medical Research Institute; he returned to the AFIP in October of 1992, as the Chief Armed Forces Medical Examiner, and remained in that position until his retirement. Subjects in the collection include anatomical and clinical pathology, forensic pathology, development of forensic pathology at AFIP, aerospace pathology, AFIP training, Vietnam, forensic military cases, Project Gemini, Robert Kennedy, pathology at the Naval Medical Center, and the AFIP's Medical Examiner's Office.
Material in this collection is complemented by the Wright Collection (OHA 375.2), which chronicles the work of Dr. Donald Gene Wright who served as a medical technician and pilot in the Air Force, logging over 3,300 hours of B-52 time from 1958- 1965. Wright went on to earn his medical degree from the University of Missouri in Columbia in 1969 where he began his internship and residency, finishing at Wesley Medical Center in Wichita, Kansas. He completed his forensic residency at AFIP in 1984, received his training at the medical examiner's offices in Baltimore and Washington, DC, and became well-known as a specialist in the investigation of aircraft accidents and mass disasters. After retiring in 1990, he served for several years as Deputy Chief Medical Examiner for the State of Maryland. The bulk of the collection consists of over 15,000 slides from Wright's collection of forensic pathology cases. Manuscripts in the collection include military and professional service records, administrative material, lectures, articles, and material related to Wright's investigations and research, including some photographs.
Medical Illustrations:
The Civil War Medical Illustrations Collection (OHA 135.05) offers graphic depictions of the work captured by trained artists who were recruited by Army Medical Museum Curator John Brinton in the early years of the Civil War. Brinton had illustrators enlist as hospital stewards who were then assigned to duty in the Surgeon General's office. Given the number of casualties during the war, both the Confederacy and the Union needed to educate as many doctors as possible in the skills of military medicine. Medical illustrations were used to depict wounds commonly encountered but rarely seen by civilian practitioners, and were used to demonstrate surgical procedures and the reasons for those procedures. Many of the illustrations in this collection also subsequently appeared in the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, a six-volume set of books that played a critically important role in illustrating the lessons learned on battlefields.
The Medical Illustrations Collection (OHA 229) is an artificial collection of medical art (completed primarily by Museum staff), and includes illustrations from the nineteenth century, World War I era, the interwar period, and World War II through the 1960s. This collection is organized into three series based on chronology. Within each series the illustrations are organized by the individual artists represented. The collection includes a wide range of military medicine subjects such as battlefield wounds, anatomical and pathological studies, hygiene and preventive medicine measures, and innovative surgical techniques.
Medical Research:
A number of collections with new finding aids also relate to medical research, primarily covering the period from the Spanish-American War to the Vietnam War. The Osborn Collection (OHA 258.05) includes material related to the service, medical career, and personal life of Dr. William S. Osborn, who joined the U.S. Army in 1899 at age 22 as a hospital corpsman. Osborn spent at least a year stationed in California before serving in the Philippines until 1902. He then graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of the University of Illinois in Chicago in 1904 and went on to work as superintendent at the Wisconsin State Hospital for the Insane and the State Hospital for the Insane in Knoxville, TN during the 1920s. Items of note in the collection include notebooks from the Army Pathological Laboratory and Santa Mesa Hospital in the Philippines (1900-1901); letters written by Osborn to his colleagues and friends describing life in the Philippines; and three personal scrapbooks made by Osborn and continued by his daughter after his death. Additional items include material on his daughter Clare Osborn, a nutritionist, reprints on the subject of fevers in the Philippines, and photographs of the Army Pathological Laboratory and life in Manila.
The Elton Collection (OHA 153) includes papers and research material gathered by pathologist Norman W. Elton, primarily for his studies of yellow fever in Central America in the 1940s and 1950s, when he served on the Canal Zone Board of Health. Elton served in the Panama Canal Zone and Philippines during World War II and was appointed a Colonel in the Medical Corps and Director of the Board of Health Laboratory at Gorgas Hospital in the Canal Zone in 1948. Elton published widely on various subjects in several medical journals throughout his career and became one of the foremost experts on yellow fever in the 1950s. Additional background material on the Board of Health Laboratory and yellow fever research dates to the late 1800s and early 1900s. Materials include Panama Canal Zone government documents, correspondence, patient records, reprints, notes, photographs, newsclippings, maps, X-rays, and slides.
The finding aids for these and other collections are available by contacting the Museum at: http://www.medicalmuseum.mil/index.cfm?p=collections.archives.collections.index