A Repository for Bottled Monsters: horse

Showing posts with label horse. Show all posts

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Letter of the Day: July 13 - veterinary museum continued

Surgeon General’s Office
Washington City, July 13, 1868

Dear Doctor

Veterinary Surgeon Braley has called on the Surgeon General this morning to ask that the “horse collection” may be inspected before it is packed up and sent to the Surg Genl, so that a proper selection of those specimens really desired for our Museum may be made.

Will you please ride over to the Lincoln Depot tomorrow morning, see Braley and the Collection, select the specimens you think desirable to accept and ask him to send them to the Museum building?

Yours very truly,
C.H. Crane

Dr. Geo. A. Otis
U.S. Army

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Accession of the day, March 9

I'm pretty sure that 6 years part can't be true.

A.M.M. [Army Medical Museum] No. 10156
Pathological Section

Washington, D.C.
March 9, 1891

Robinson Dr. C.B.
Veterinary Surgeon

Foetal bones, said to have been discharged from the uterus of a mare, about 12 years old. Owned by Senator J.S. Barbour of Virginia.

It is stated that she had not been put to a horse for 6 years.

History received verbally
Specimen received Mar. 8, 1891

Monday, February 15, 2010

Letter of the day: February 15

Smithsonian Institution
Washington
February 15 '70 (1870)

Dr. George A. Otis
Army Medical Museum,

Dear Sir,

I have the honor on behalf of this establishment to acknowledge the receipt of the two teeth mention in yours of February 5th and which have been transferred by the Medical Department of the U.S. Army to the Smithsonian Institution in accordance with the terms of an agreement, entered into, some time since, by these two establishments relative to an exchange of certain kinds of specimens.

Of the two teeth which are of those of Fossil horse, - the larger will bear the number 9826, the smaller 9827.

Very truly,
Your obdt servant,

Joseph Henry

Scty, Smith. Inst.
by D.L. [illegible]

Friday, February 22, 2008

Technology left behind, or an Intro to Our Neat Photos

Once upon a time, when one used horses in battle, one had to protect them as well. Germany's use of poison gas in World War 1 meant that one had to have a gas mask for one's horse too. This is Reeve 17408 and can be downloaded full-size from our third Flickr site.

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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