A Repository for Bottled Monsters: tapeworms

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Letter of the Day: April 28 - parasitic worms

Philadelphia
1302 Fillnut St.

April 28, 1886

Dear Dr. Billings,

About a year ago you wrote to me proposing to send to me for identification some specimens of entozoa in the Army Medical Museum. If you will now at your convenience have the collection sent to the following address, at my leisure, I will examine the speciments and in due time report therein.

Sincerely yours,

Joseph Leidy

Address
Prof. Joseph Leidy
Biological Dept University of Pennsylvania
West Philadelphia
Philadelphia, Pa

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Letter of the Day: March 2

We may very well have the type of oil wrong.

COPY

Baton Rouge Barracks, La.

March 2, 1878

Surgeon General U.S.A.

Washington, D.C.

Sir:

I have the honor to state that I have delivered to the A.A.Q.M. [Acting Assistant Quarter Master], at this Post for transportation to the Army Medical Museum, a small vial containing the head of a Tape Worm. Taenia solium? It was discharged by a child 2 ½ years of age on May 12, 1876.The child had been treated for the worm at different times, for more than a year previous to that time.

Treatment – Complete starvation for twenty-four hours – The administration at the end of that time of Zi oil of Male Fern – and the repetition of the same does with Z; castor oil 12 hours subsequently. The patient has been entirely free from any signs of Tape Worm from that time to the present. I trust the contribution though small, may be acceptable.

Very Respectfully

Your obedient servant

(Signed) M. E. Taylor

Assistant Surgeon U.S.A.

Post Surgeon

A true copy

George A. Otis

Asst Surg. USA

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

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Letter of the Day: April 28 - parasitic worms

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Letter of the Day: March 2

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