A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Brooklyn

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Letter of the Day: March 3 (2 of 2)

Brooklyn, Mar. 3. 68

My dear Doctor,

Your favor of the 29^th Ult. Is just received and I feel greatly obliged to you for the advice you have tendered me in reference to Francis, of which I shall avail myself.

It is a pity that the examining surgeons of Brooklyn have been ill-chosen. None of them enjoys reputation or public confidence, and Burdick belongs to the eclectic school of quackery. I doubt very much whether one of them is capable to realize the actual condition of the patient. However I will assist in the matter and see that justice is meted out in the premises.

The specimen you refer to is at your disposal and will be sent with the others, if you deem it worth your while to add it to the museum. I am however, unable to furnish you with the items of the case to which I paid no attention when at Fortress Monroe. Dr. Bontecou of Troy N.Y. may be able to furnish you with the desired information, for he was the medical director of the Hygeia Hospital at the time. The specimen intended for you I shall send at my swiftest leisure.

Very sincerely yours

Louis Bauer

Geo A. Otis, M.D.

Lieut. Col. & Asst. Surg. U.S.A.

PS In what way will I send it so as to incur no expenses.

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.

A Repository for Bottled Monsters

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Wednesday, March 3, 2010

Letter of the Day: March 3 (2 of 2)

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