A Repository for Bottled Monsters: GMPI

Thursday, June 4, 2009

Microscopes, illustrated

We had a request a couple of weeks ago for scans from old Bausch & Lomb microscope catalogs. This can't really do it justice, but hopefully you'll get the idea of how beautiful the engraving is from an 1893 catalog.

Friday, February 29, 2008

Medical trade literature finding aid online

We've finally had our database of medical trade literature (ie advertisements) converted to html and you can see a listing of items for this collection at the following URL. It's already obsolete as we continue to add material on a weekly basis. This isn't the best solution, but it will give a researcher a rough idea of what type of material we have and it's certainly more up-to-date than the 20-year old book that listed them, The Finest Instruments Ever Made. As we scan more of these catalogues, links to the scans will be added too.

OHA 168

General Medical Products Information Collection, ca. 1815-present
90 cubic feet, 144 boxes.
Finding aid available, arranged, active, unrestricted.
Artificial collection of product information, primarily advertisements and trade literature, on medical equipment, prosthetics, and pharmaceuticals. Arranged by manufacturer. Item-level finding aid.

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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Thursday, June 4, 2009

Microscopes, illustrated

Friday, February 29, 2008

Medical trade literature finding aid online

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