A Repository for Bottled Monsters: evacuation

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The NY Times as a history of medicine primer

A front page article on the current state of military medical evacuation -

As Afghan Fighting Expands, U.S. Medics Plunge In
By C. J. CHIVERS
Published: June 12, 2010
Nearly nine years into the Afghan war, the pace for air crews that retrieve the wounded has become pitched.

an obituary dealing with 20th century neurology -

Fred Plum, Neurologist Who Helped Coin ‘Persistent Vegetative State,’ Dies at 86
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Published: June 11, 2010
Dr. Plum’s influential research improved the diagnosis and treatment of patients who lose consciousness from head injuries, strokes, metabolic disorders and drug overdoses.

The country's last tuberculosis sanitarium -

In Florida, a Lifeline to Patients With TB
By DAMIEN CAVE
Published: June 12, 2010
Sixty years after it opened for tuberculosis patients, A.G. Holley State Hospital in Florida is both a paragon of globalized public health and a health care anachronism.

And the difficulties of genomic medicine ten years later -

A Decade Later, Genetic Map Yields Few New Cures
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: June 12, 2010
The primary goal of the $3 billion Human Genome Project — to ferret out the genetic roots of common diseases and generate treatments — remains largely elusive.

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

Pages

Sunday, June 13, 2010

The NY Times as a history of medicine primer

Get new posts by email:

FeedBurner FeedCount

Google analytics