Book review out

The staff writes regularly for various publications and this seems like a good place to mention them. I got a copy of something I wrote in the mail a couple of days ago - “Book Review: Rehabilitating Bodies: Health, History and the American Civil War. By Lisa A. Long,” Journal of Southern History 74:1 (February 2008), 196-197.

We're also all writing a regular column for Scientist Magazine, edited by the Museum's Director Dr. Adrianne Noe and I'll try to get a list of those up.

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.

Letter on "A Family Album is One for the History Books"

At the beginning of the year, the New York Times ran an article that caught our archivist eyes:

A Family Album Is One for the History Books
By ROBERTA HERSHENSON
Published: January 1, 2008
Photographs of William Howard Taft’s mission to the Far East, now on view at the Nippon Club, were found in an unlikely place.

I recalled that we had similar photos of Taft donated fairly recently, so Kathleen checked the collection and found them. We sent a letter to the Times that it didn't run, so here it is now for the Taft fans.

To the editor:

We read with interest "A Family Album is One for the History Books," (January 1), of the Harry Fowler Woods scrapbooks containing photographs from the 1905 return to the Philippines of William Howard Taft. The National Museum of Health and Medicine archives also has photographs of Taft in the Philippines, taken at his 1901 inauguration as the first Governor-General of the islands. Osborn also took pictures of the Filipino memorial services for the assassinated President McKinley, as well as Douglas MacArthur's father, military governor Arthur MacArthur. The photographs are part of a recent donation, the William S. Osborn Collection of scrapbooks, diaries, and dozens of letters that Osborn created during his service as a hospital corpsman in the wake of the Spanish-American War, as well as items from later in his career as a physician in Tennessee and Wisconsin. Many of Osborn's pictures were cyanotypes, which remain a lovely cool shade of blue. The scrapbook can be viewed by appointment.

Regards,

Kathleen Stocker & Michael Rhode
Archivists, National Museum of Health and Medicine Washington, DC

Technology left behind, or an Intro to Our Neat Photos

Once upon a time, when one used horses in battle, one had to protect them as well. Germany's use of poison gas in World War 1 meant that one had to have a gas mask for one's horse too. This is Reeve 17408 and can be downloaded full-size from our third Flickr site.

Welcome to an experiment

Hello. My name is Mike Rhode, and I'm the chief archivist of the Otis Historical Archives, one of 5 collecting divisions of the museum. The entire museum staff's been invited and we'll see who else joins us here. Since Blogger is blocked by the IT department at work, this will be a labor of love (or something of the sort) done after hours.

Due to a large scanning project, we've been generating digital content - a lot of digital content - and trying to figure out how to make it available to the public more easily. Our 3 Flickr sites for favorite photographs selected by Archives staff - 1 and 2 and 3 - became a major success last month when BoingBoing linked to them, so I thought I'd try another element of the Web 2.0 concept to get information out. There's at least one other medical museum blog that I know of - Biomedicine on Display: Medical Museion @ University of Copenhagen.

We've been fairly aggressive about posting material on our collections and Museum to our website, so click on the link in the upper right corner and explore that too please. More to follow.