A Repository for Bottled Monsters: neuropathology

Showing posts with label neuropathology. Show all posts

Monday, September 13, 2010

Letter of the Day: September 13

Post Hospital

Fort Clark Texas

Sept. 13. 1883

Col. J.S. Billings

Surgeon US Army

Curator Army Medical Museum

Washington D.C.

Sir:

In reply to your communication of the 5^th Inst. I regret to say that no specimen was preserved in the case of Pvt. George W. Trump. Co. K 19 Infantry who died June 15^th 1885 of embolism of Right Middle Cerebral Artery.

The specimen removed in this case became, under examination, much broken down and torn (through softening of the brain structure), and was through to be of too little value to forward to the Army Medical Museum.

Very Respectfully,

Your Obt. Servt.

F.L. Town

Major and Surgeon US Army

Post Surgeon

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

NYTimes on traumatic brain injury research

The Museum has an extremely large collection of brains and slices thereof that can be used in this type of research. For information on current research in other places, see A Chance for Clues to Brain Injury in Combat Blasts
By ALAN SCHWARZ
Published: June 23, 2009
Twenty members of the military have donated their brain tissue upon death to help scientists determine the effects of blast injuries on the brain.

Friday, February 29, 2008

New finding aid for Haymaker collection

Dr. Webb Haymaker was a neuropathologist at AFIP. We have a small collection of his papers and just put online a finding aid for them.

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

Monday, September 13, 2010

Letter of the Day: September 13

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

NYTimes on traumatic brain injury research

Friday, February 29, 2008

New finding aid for Haymaker collection

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