From Feldshers to Force Health Protection: A History of Navy Physician Associates

Here's a good article by my colleague on a key component of the Medical Service Corps - https://www.dvidshub.net/news/571769/feldshers-force-health-protection-history-navy-physician-associates

Gunther von Hagens, RIP

Gunther von Hagens, Creator of Polarizing ‘Body Worlds’ Exhibits, Dies at 81

A German scientist, he developed a process for turning corpses into posable figures. His shows drew millions of visitors, and many detractors.

By Clay Risen

July 28, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/science/gunther-von-hagens-dead.html

2 new free Navy history books - 1 with chapter on Navy Medicine

This has an article by historian Andre Sobocinski on NM history -

 

On Course Through History: The U.S. Navy at 250

https://www.dvidshub.net/publication/issues/77185

 

This has very little on medicine but cool pictures  –

 

America's Navy at 250: The Historic Collections of Naval History and Heritage Command (2026)

https://www.dvidshub.net/publication/issues/77304

Book by Gurdon Buck, Army Medical Museum contributor, for sale

Buck donated his photos of Civil War plastic surgery to the museum, which also has a copy of his book, courtesy of Dr. Blair Rogers, who wrote about him in plastic surgery journals.

Contributions to Reparative Surgery: Showing Its Application to the Treatment of Deformities, Produced by Destructive Disease or Injury; Congenital Defects From Arrest or Excess of Development; and Cicatricial Contractions From Burns By Gurdon Buck New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1876. First Edition. Octavo, viii, [1], 8-237, [3], 3-30, [2] pages. In Very Good minus condition. Gurdon Buck (1807-1877) was a pioneering military plastic surgeon during the Civil War. He is known for being the first doctor to incorporate pre- and post-operative photographs into his publications. Buck's fascia and Buck's extension are both named after him. $1,800  View Full Description Here

Military medicine history articles

From wagons to air ambulances: Medevac keeps the fight alive

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/569426/wagons-air-ambulances-medevac-keeps-fight-alive

Latest AMEDD Historian newsletter

The latest newsletter, No. 54, on the Civil War is online at https://auls.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/collectionDiscovery?vid=01AULS_INST:Stimson&collectionId=81240848270009191&lang=en.

or https://archive.org/details/amedd-historian-number-54-summer-2026 

Fun, and mostly accurate, video on Navy Medicine in the Civil War

Navy Medicine in the Civil War and Today (featuring CAPT Teresa Dent, NC)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBQdyPqwloE

RIP Norman Rich

 He wasn't a historian of medicine, but his long-term longitudinal followups become a history of some sort. Of interest to us is his preservation of military medical material from the Vietnam War, including booby traps, which are now in the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

https://news.usuhs.edu/2026/06/usu-mourns-passing-of-military-medicine.html

Fragility of Man photographs

https://www.instagram.com/fragility_of_man

My neighbor Roger, as well as being a firefighter, is an artist. He's more in the momento mori tradition than a medical museum one, but I think readers here will enjoy these. It's a plastic skeleton of course.

Beneath the Sheets: Anatomy, Art and Power exhibit at Thackray Museum of Medicine

The shocking truth behind historic anatomical art

Deborah Nicholls-Lee

https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20260203-the-shocking-truth-behind-historic-anatomical-art

The Maude Abbott Medical Museum's website

I got a very kind note from a staff member today, so for the first time in years, I popped over to their website. It's a nice, sleek guide, and I'm looking forward to checking out their newsletters. It's so nice to see photos of the museum; when I tried to find it about 35 years ago (sigh), I had no luck at all. Dr. Richard Fraser really revitalized the collection.

If anyone can recommend a good paper on Abbott, her role in the International Association of Medical Museums, and her work with the Army Medical Museum, I'd be grateful. I was starting to look into that via the IAMM's journal but never finished that research. I literally just moved cubicles again at my current job and was able to put my books on a bookshelf for the first time since COVID so I got to see all the medical museum histories again.

A history of The Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion is online

Over 20 years ago, I wrote a couple of papers -  ""An enduring monument" : Philadelphia's contributions to The Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870-1888)" lecture for "Philadelphia, the 'Mecca' of North American Medical Publishing" session, Society for the History of Authorship, Reading and Publishing, London, 10-13 July 2002 and "'The Extent of These Materials is Simply Enormous': The Creation and Publication of The Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion from 1862 to 1888," lecture for the American Association for the History of Medicine, 2 May 2004. These evolved into a version prepared for print that was never accepted for publication. This fall I was surprised to see that a good version isn't online anywhere, so I attached the slides from the original talk, and uploaded it to the Medical Heritage Library at

'The Extent of These Materials is Simply Enormous': The Creation and Publication of The Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion from 1862 to 1888

https://archive.org/details/mshwr-final

Mutter Museum launches massive expansion

I'm somewhat surprised by this (ok, very surprised as the director was forced out this year) and hope it works out well for them. 

College of Physicians and Mütter Museum will undergo a $27 million expansion and renovation

Story by Rosa Cartagena, The Philadelphia Inquirer

 https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/college-of-physicians-and-m%C3%BCtter-museum-and-will-undergo-a-27-million-expansion-and-renovation/ar-AA1QC8aY

Family Destinations Guide recommends the NMHM

It's closed at the moment due to the government shutdown though.

The Bizarre Museum In Maryland You've Probably Never Heard Of

By: Author Joshua Campbell

Posted on July 2, 2025

https://familydestinationsguide.com/heard-bizarre-museum-maryland/ 

Military medicine displays at the Canadian War Museum

Canadian War museum medical displays from my friend M McMahon.  The first one is from the war of 1812. Then WWI and WWIi.

The kits look to be in fantastic shape.

Walter Reed Forest Glen Annex painting

I rescued this painting from a leaking building when I worked for the medical museum -

From Girls' School to Army Hospital: Retired U.S. Army Col. Donald E. Hall, Ph.D. Explores the Legacy of the Walter Reed Forest Glen Annex

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/546039/girls-school-army-hospital-retired-us-army-col-donald-e-hall-phd-explores-legacy-walter 

“Carry On:” The History and Innovation of Physical and Occupational Therapy in Military Medicine Exhibit

Images of the National Museum of Health and Medicine exhibit, which is mostly Army-focused, are at https://www.dvidshub.net/image/9200656/carry-history-and-innovation-physical-and-occupational-therapy-military-medicine-exhibit

Mutter Museum articles

Letter from Philadelphia

A Medical-History Museum Contends with Its Collection of Human Remains

Supporters saw the Mütter's preserved fetuses, skulls, and "Soap Lady" as a celebration of human difference. New management saw an ethical and a political minefield.

By Rachel Monroe

June 23, 2025

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/06/30/a-medical-history-museum-contends-with-its-collection-of-human-remains

From Spectacle to Stewardship

What Ethical Leadership Looks Like When Museums Are Entrusted With the Dead

Kate Quinn

June 23 2025

https://medium.com/@quinnkate610/from-spectacle-to-stewardship-38861415afba

Curator Anna Dhody resigns from the Mütter Museum

Longtime curator Anna Dhody resigns from the Mütter Museum

by Rosa Cartagena, Rita Giordano, The Philadelphia Inquirer August 14 2024

https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/wellness/longtime-curator-anna-dhody-resigns-from-the-m%C3%BCtter-museum/ar-AA1oNCJh

Aug 7: Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War lecture at Library of Congress

Military Medicine and the Hidden Costs of War

Join the John W. Kluge Center and University of Minnesota Political Science Professor Tanisha M
Fazal for an event examining the effect improvements in medical care in conflict zones
on the long term costs of war. Fazal is the author of State Death: The Politics of Geography and
Conquest, Occupation, and Annexation, and Wars of Law: Unintended Consequences in the
Regulation of Armed Conflict. This event will be available to watch live, virtually as well as in person in room LJ-119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress.

Request ADA accommodations 5 days in advance at
202-707-6362 or ADA@loc.gov
August 7, 2024
4:00pm
Thomas Jefferson Building,
Room LJ-119
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Michael Stratmoen - 202-707-3751

Swann Fellow Lecture, Tuesday, March 12 in Library of Congress

Were They so Torturous? Reevaluating Modern Surgery's Underdog Story
12:00-1:00 pm Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Swann Fellow Lecture

Dining Room A, 6th Floor Madison Building

Swann Fellow, Zoe Copeman, PhD candidate in Art History and Archaeology at the University of Maryland, argues that the history of surgery relies on the narrative of
surgery's so-called "torturous" past to legitimize the practices of elite, university-trained medical men, reducing the once valued work of middling and lower-class practitioners to quackery. Drawing from the Library of Congress's eighteenth- and nineteenth-century caricatures, her research traces changes in the public perception of surgery and how visual media across disciplines would transform the surgeon (and his tools) into powerful metaphors of European and American modernity. This event will be recorded.

For more information:

Sara W. Duke, Curator, Popular & Applied
Graphic Art, sduk@loc.gov