A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Carnegie Collection

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Have you seen this man?

Have you seen this man? Found this image tucked in an envelope in the Carnegie Reprint collection. The name is tough to read and we don't seem to have any papers associated. But great picture. Its from a photography studio in Boston.

Friday, January 15, 2010

Finds from the Carnegie Reprints

Found an article called "Irrational Elements in Some Theories of Life" by C. P. Raven, 1956. Its opening paragraphs really struck me.

"One of the starting points of modern (study of significance) is the recognition that the words of everyday language for each person are charged with a complex of 'meanings', and that part of this complex of meanings, of emotional and volitional elements, is taken over in the language of science.

As the progress of science is entirely dependent on the mutual understanding between people working in the same field, it is important at least to recognize these irrational elements in our scientific thinking, and were possible to eliminate them..."

So much information is presented to us these days from so many sources, how often do we stop to think about the "emotional and volitional elements" that had probably colored what was said?

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, January 27, 2010

Have you seen this man?

Friday, January 15, 2010

Finds from the Carnegie Reprints

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