Friday, May 30 - Museum closed

The museum's closed due to the installation of a new power generator. Also we'll probably be closed on Saturday June 1 as well. Call 202-782-2200 or 2201 after 20 am on both Saturday and Sunday to check the status.

Exhibit Development at the Pentagon

Some of the team made it out to the pentagon this morning to work on possible exhibits for the 

Assistant Secretary of Defense of Health Affairs, look forward having some of our work in the Pentagon, that will help bring some positive attention to the Museum of Health and Medicine.

Check out some of our photos, with some made up quotes, just for kicks. Later Kids.

NC

Dean Kamen designs prosthetic arm for military amputees

Yahoo finance has a three-minute video of Dean Kamen's new prosthetic arm, which looks absolutely amazing. It's just stunning.

Friday, May 30 - Museum closed?

Anyone planning on visiting the Museum on Friday, Saturday or Sunday should call first at 202-782-2200 or 2201 to confirm that it's open. A generator is being replaced starting Friday at noon which will cut power to the whole building.

New Guy at the Museum

Hello Everybody

just wanted to leave a short spot on my first month in the Museum, My name is Navjeet Singh and I am the new guy at the museum, my position is exhibits specialist and I do exhibit development and exhibit design for the museum, I am not new to exhibit design, I have been doing exhibits since 1998 and recently did contract work for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the exhibit is Sikh's Legacy of the Punjab, and also have done exhibits for National Museum of the American Indian, Air and Space, National Museum of Women in the Arts, FAA, NOAA, GSA, I recently did an large graphic mural and exhibit for National 4 H in thier headquarters. I attached a short video small size of some exhibit work.(apple quicktime) I have also done other museums and some international shows. In addition I also teach at the Corcoran College of Art and Design and have been adjunct faculty there since 2003, while also teaching at other local colleges and schools....Now I have been at NMHM for about a month, actually its been a month and a half, and have met mostly everyone now and am getting a good feel for what we're all about. I am really enjoying it, and I truly enjoy working with everyone on the staff, some excellent people... so far its alot of work, and much more to do, as most the exhibits need some work, right now I'm working on the RESOLVED exhibit, "Resolved; Advances in Forensic Identification of U.S. War Dead", and have just a few weeks left in putting all the pieces together, We are looking at a July 4th opening date, so only a few weeks left to install, We are doing some fun stuff in this exhibit and hope to treat the visitors to some impressionable exhibits and feel as we are on the right track, I have developed several large murals, and am using different medias / substrates and some very interesting artifacts will be displayed, we have some other ideas to include interactive stations, and I hope that I can put together a short video piece for the exhibit by opening, but also have other exhibits to consider. June will bring the Balad exhibit, and so right now have a full plate, but am really enjoying myself. My office is in an interesting space, for those of you who don't know, I am in the former ballistics range, very interesting indeed, some stories I have heard was they used to shoot cadavers, pigs, bones, tissue in gelatin blocks, and some of that material decorates the celling in my work area. Not sure how much of that is true, but have heard this from staff who were here when they did that. So far I have only done a few things here, National Hairball Awarness was one of the first, I attached a pic, and just the Stroke awareness exhibit, but am hoping to get the museum some attention with RESOLVED. I look forward to keeping you all informed, keep it positive in the end its all about the journey.

Cheers!

NC

British military medicine conference CFP

[this is run by Pete Starling]

SECURING THE ULTIMATE VICTORY П

A conference exploring the history of military medicine and health care

15th -17th April 2009

ARMY MEDICAL SERVICES MUSEUM Mytchett, Surrey

The Army Medical Services Museum is to host a conference exploring the history of military medicine and health care covering the period from 1600 to the present. The conference will take place in the Defence Medical Services Training Centre, Keogh Barracks, Mytchett, Surrey, where the museum is situated.

Papers are invited on the history of military medicine particularly covering the following themes: Nursing, catastrophe and post conflict medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, pioneers of military medicine, disease prevention and research, the influence of the military on civilian medicine and the history of dedicated hospitals for the care of the sick and wounded military patients.

Closing date for the submission of abstracts is 1 August 2008. Abstracts should be submitted using the attached form and sent to:

Director

Army Medical Services Museum

Keogh Barracks

Ash Vale

Aldershot

GU12 5RQ

01252 868820 Email: armymedicalmuseum@btinternet.com



SECURING THE ULTIMATE VICTORY П




Title: Full Name:

Name of Institution (if applicable):

Full Postal Address:


Email address: Telephone No:

Title of Abstract:

Bookings for the conference will open on 1 September 2008.

For booking forms please contact:

The Director

AMS Museum, Keogh Barracks, Ash Vale, Aldershot, GU12 5RQ

armymedicalmuseum@btinternet.com

Wash Post on leprosy

Sally Squires and her husband John Wilhelm have done an interesting and touching documentary film "Triumph at Carville: A Tale of Leprosy in America" which can be seen at the Museum with a small exhibit on leprosy (aka Hansen's Disease). Today she had an article in the Post about how the disease is still around, but not as dangerous as it has been in the past. See "A Scary Diagnosis Hits Home When a Tiny Rash Turns Out to Be Leprosy, A Teen and Her Community Learn the Modern Reality of Living With the Biblical Disease," By Sally Squires, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, May 27, 2008; Page HE01. On June 19th, we'll have d a free lecture on Hansen's disease by Wayne M. Meyers of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Dr. Meyers is an expert on the disease, which used to be a major area of research in the AFIP, and we have an oral history with him. Drs. Meyers and Chapman Binford were the main doctors working on it. We have some of Dr. Binford's records:

OHA 114

* Binford Leprosy Material, 1922-1975
* .5 cubic foot, 1 box.
* No finding aid, arranged, inactive, unrestricted.
* Public Health Bulletins, reprints, manuscript articles, journals, and photographs related to leprosy. Includes articles and correspondence by Chapman H. Binford, chief of the AFIP Geographic Pathology department.

Museum mentioned on History News Network

See "Memorial Day, the Great War, and America’s Last Surviving World War I Veteran,"
By Jeffrey S. Reznick, a former curator at the museum. Jeff used a couple of photos from the archives, as you can too if you click on our Flickr links to the right.

London history of medicine conference includes military medicine

History of Medicine Research Student Conference
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
Thursday and Friday 19-20 June 2008

The conference will feature eighteen papers from research students in
four areas of the history of medicine:

- Understanding Medicine and the Body in History

- Medicine, Health and War in History

- Asian Medicine in History

- Healthcare in British History

There will also be panel discussions chaired by established academics including Professors Steven King and Paul Weindling of Oxford Brookes University and Professor Roger Cooter of UCL

The conference will close with a keynote address from Professor Anne Hardy of UCL, Editor of Medical History

Places are limited and will be assigned on a first come first served basis. There will be a small fee to cover registration and cateringcosts.

If you are interested in attending the conference, contact George Gosling at gcgosling@brookes.ac.uk by Friday 30 May 2008.

The full conference programme and poster can be accessed by following
this link: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/library/hmrs_conf

For information on this event and other opportunities see the 'History
of Medicine Research Students' group on facebook at
http://brookes.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6213918604

Forensic identification of dead in China disaster

We're opening an exhibit later this year - Resolved - on forensic identification of military dead. This article has some interesting parallels to the difficulty of identifying people after time has elapsed.

China’s Rush to Dispose of Dead Compounds Agony
By EDWARD WONG
Published: May 24, 2008
Family members have not been able to identify relatives and traditional reverence for the deceased has been upset.

Article on future of military museums

This article is mostly on the Navy museum, but could some of the same issues apply to the Medical Museum?

"Museums Look Into the Future of Military History," By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, May 25, 2008; Page C01.

A medical museum reopens in UK

See "The history of medicine," By Natalie Slater, 19/5/2008 on 'the newly refurbished medical museum at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.' The difference between a national museum like ours which was built by the federal government and the more common university or hospital museum needs to be examined more, I think.

A day in the life...

An interesting research request came in through the Radiology department today. Someone's looking for fluoroscope burns. So far I haven't turned up exactly what they want, which is modern color shots, but check out this photo of a wax model that I did find:



The caption reads: Breast. Burn, X-Ray. Wax model. No. 92 X-ray burn involving right breast and axilla. Necrosis of tissue producing sloughing ulceration, the bottom of which includes pleura and lung tissue. X-ray treatment was applied for carcinoma of the breast. Colored, woman, age 35 years. Army Medical Museum model prepared by Dr. J.F. Wallis.

Wallis means that it was done during World War 1, because that's when he was on the staff. We might still have this model in historical collections, but that department was working at the warehouse today, and thus missed the coffee and cake that we had to celebrate the Museum's birthday.

So how does one find something in the Archives? We've got an internal database (or fifty) that you can access a derivative of at our Guide to Collections. With the help of contract Archivists from the Information Manufacturing Company, we're scanning tens of thousands of images per year and uploading them into an internal database, only available to our staff now, but eventually we'll open it to a wider audience. And some of the finding something is me or one of the other archivists knowing where something is because we put it away a decade ago or so.

Today is our birthday

So far the Museum's survived four name changes, at least 8 moves, several shutdowns for moves or wars, and is 146 years old today.
Surgeon General Hammond

In Circular No. 2, issued on May 21, 1862, Army Surgeon General William Hammond specifically stated "Medical Directors will furnish one copy of this circular to every medical officer in the department in which they are serving." (Henry p. 12) This circular established the Museum, stating:

As it is proposed to establish in Washington, an Army Medical Museum, Medical officers are directed diligently to collect, and to forward to the office of the Surgeon General, all specimens of morbid anatomy, surgical or medical, which may be regarded as valuable; together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed, and such other matters as may prove of interest in the study of military medicine or surgery.

These objects should be accompanied by short explanatory notes.

Each specimen in the collection will have appended the name of the medical officer by whom it was prepared.

Shortly after the initial circular letter was issued, Hammond recalled John Hill Brinton from duty on the western battlefields. Brinton arrived hoping to receive one of the newly-created medical inspectorships, a job for which he felt well-qualified. Instead, he was assigned to the examining board for surgeons, placed in charge of the Museum, and told to prepare the surgical history of the war. Brinton's colleague, Joseph Javier Woodward, had been assigned to the Surgeon General's Office on May 19, and was responsible for the medical (ie caused by disease) collections and history of the war.

2 articles on military medicine

Steven Solomon sent in these two links:

"Military medical advancements benefit civilian health care," by Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg, American Forces Press Service - which is always nice of course, but here's the takeaway quote, "In today's war, in the combat theater, 97 percent of those people who
were wounded in theater survived those wounds because of the medical care," Dr. Kilpatrick said. "That's just a phenomenal number, and it's because that care is so immediate.

and

"AFMC surgeon general: joint medical teams saving lives," by Chuck Paone,66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs, and the quote to note is: But what's more, follow-on studies are now showing that military trauma care professionals are achieving identically dramatic fatality reductions at home. "That means they're bringing these skills back with them and getting the same results for people who suffer non-combat-related traumas," he said.

Prosthetics ruled equal, not better

A South African who races on two prosthetic legs, designed to mimic a cheetah's hind legs, can compete in the Olympics if he can qualify. The decision was made after testing his oxygen consumption to determine that he was in fact, working as hard as someone with two natural legs would be. I'll spare you my editorial comment on that and for more details, see "Double-Amputee Allowed To Compete for Olympic Bid: Appeals Court: No Edge Gained From Blades," By Craig Timberg, Washington Post Foreign Service, Saturday, May 17, 2008; Page A01.

And what about the future of Walter Reed (and thus the Museum?)

Beats me, but an article from the Post today had some interesting sentences, including "The 2009 defense authorization bill that emerged from a House committee late Wednesday would halt construction of replacement hospitals for Walter Reed Army Medical Center until the Defense Department demonstrates that it can deliver world-class health services." and "Murtha's concerns include his view that there has been insufficient oversight of the design of the new hospitals, as well as the fact that estimated costs for the expansion in Bethesda, which will be renamed Walter Reed, have increased to $940 million today from $201 million in May 2005."

See "House Panel to Delay Work on Two Projects: Bill Seeks Better Military Health Care," by Amy Gardner, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, May 16, 2008; Page B01.

A day in the life...

I've been realizing this blog is drifting towards aiming squarely at history of medicine types, so I'm going to try to wrench it in a slightly different direction. Here's how I spent part of my day as an archivist today.

I was walking through the exhibit floor this morning and heard voices coming out of our Human Body, Human Being exhibit. The exhibit flooded over the weekend when Washington got 5-7 inches of rain. That side of the museum is built into a hill and has been flooding off and on for about a decade now. On the past Monday, the exhibits and collection staff had dismantled the exhibits against the wall - on the urinary system and bones - and moved them out of the way so the building engineers could look up and say, "yup, it's leaking water."

The whole hall (the Anatifacts area in this map), which is about 1/4 of the exhibit floor, was closed all week, but this morning Steve Hill, head of our exhibits staff, Tim Clarke Jr, our public relations guy and Beth Eubanks, our registrar, were muscling some of the exhibit cases into a new configuration about 10 feet from the wall. I lent a hand and helped and a little after opening the cases were in place. Brian Spatola, collections manager of anatomical collections, brought the specimens back from storage and the four of them put the display back together. Meanwhile...

...I was leading a tour of people who had bought a silent auction benefit behind-the-scenes tour. Our former PR guy Steven Solomon had started these a few years back. We started in historical collections where collections manager Alan Hawk pulled out a bunch of surgical kits dating from the Civil War until World War II, and then showed them wax and plaster models of facial reconstruction surgery from the same time period. Anatomical curator Franklin Damann was giving a tour of his own in anatomical collections, so we swapped groups and he showed my group Civil War amputated femurs, Ham the space chimp, plastinated organs and a quick glance into the wet tissue room where specimens are stored in bottles of formalin.

We combined the two groups and neuroanatomical collections manager Archie Fobbs displayed some of our brain slides. Instead of making a microscope slide, his predecessors sectioned and mounted slices of whole brains and you can see stroke or tumor damage. I think the high point for the group was when Archie opened up his demo tub of a brain preserved in alcohol and let people handle it. Nobody was in the Human Developmental Anatomy Center, so I did a quick riff on scanning slides of embryos which had been collected 100 years ago to make first wax or plaster models of organ systems. These are now being scanned with the models made in the computer. Finally I gave my standard tour of the archives, including a letter signed by Walter Reed, a 1917 doctor's diary, a revised confidential asbestosis report for Johns Manville from 1949, a lantern slide photograph of a survivor from Hiroshima, an album of the museum's Civil War Surgical Photographs and some of our trade lit advertising material.

So there's a good bit of a typical day. If there's interest in more posts like this, comment below please.

New Grog Ration from Navy's medical historian

André B. Sobocinski, the Deputy Historian/ Publications Manager of the Office of the Historian of the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) has a new issue of The Grog Ration newsletter about medical naval history out now.

The table of contents:

Page 1: Care Amidst the Shortage: The Relationship between the American Red Cross and the Navy Nurse Corps in World War I by Jennifer Telford, RN, PhD
When the United States declared war on 6 April 1917, the nation had but a nucleus of an army and a navy. The swift growth of the number of troops within a year from 100,000 to 4 million men presented a problem of enormous magnitude to the nursing profession; it was a shortage of epic proportions. The Army Nurse Corps had a mere 400 nurses on active duty, while the Navy had 160. The need for a rapid expansion of nursing in wartime to provide care both on the home-front and overseas brought about a controversy over who, in fact, was qualified to serve. The role of Katrina Hertzer, the liaison officer between the Red Cross Nursing Service and the Navy Nurse Corps, and who aided in the enrollment of nurses into the Corps, is of particular interest.
Nursing leaders during World War I debated about whether or not minimally trained nurses' aides should be recruited to help offset the professional nursing shortage. The result was the formation of an Army School of Nursing and the enrollment of volunteer nurses' aides into the Red Cross. The recruitment of nurses' aides to offset the nursing shortage of the World War I era was a logical solution to meeting the needs for nursing personnel. Whether or not this action compromised the status of nursing as a profession is still a matter of interest.
This article is adapted from lectures given at the Society for the History of Navy Medicine (SHNM) session in Rochester, NY, and as part of the Surgeon General's Speaker Series (SGSS) in Bethesda, MD, in April 2008. A PowerPoint of her SHNM lecture can be found at http://www.history-navy-med.org/home.html. A video of her SGSS lecture can be accessed at http://www.health.mil.

Page 7: Elvis Has Boarded the Ship
In 1958, LTJG Julia Pickering was one of two Navy nurses serving aboard the troop transport USS General Randall (AP-115) in port at Brooklyn, NY. Also on board this ship was a newly enlisted Army sergeant who had already established his name as an American pop icon. In a 2004 interview with the Office of the Historian, Pickering remembered this special passenger.

Page 8: The Surgeon's Log: Navy Medicine in Washington, DC
In 1908 a young hospital apprentice named Albert B. Montgomery reported for duty at the Naval Hospital, Washington, DC, then located on old "Observatory Hill" in Foggy Bottom. Years later he looked back upon his experiences-from racing horse-driven ambulances on cobblestone streets to obtaining study specimens at the city morgue for Naval Medical School students.

Page 11: Scuttlebutt
Find out about the upcoming Navy medical events (e.g., film premieres and lectures).

Page 12: Navy Medical Quiz
Good luck on this issue's quiz. As always, the first person to submit correct answers to all questions will receive a special prize. The answers from our previous quiz can be found on page 13.

Tried and True Always Works

Since I've been away from the blog for a while, I thought I would work back into the swing of things with a plethora of links, a panoply of bloggy goodness for you to behold. Enjoy.

• Two offerings from our awesome friend Joanna at Morbid Anatomy: A few photos from her visit to the Musée Dupuytren in Paris (France, not Texas) with links of her own to follow; and vintage photos of med students with their cadavers. Both posts - worth it.
  

• Street Anatomy points us toward the Skull-A-Day project. I love it when blog titles exactly capture what their posts feature.
  

• And from pathtalk, a blog about pathology, is a link to a video that is beautiful and cool, but beyond me technically. The blog post - Animated DNA - and this bit of description 'incredibly cool animation of the central dogma of molecular biology' - offer some more clues. I watched it, I liked it, and think you might, too.
  

• And how about these very pretty pictures of surgical instruments, demonstrating that artistry can be found in anything and anywhere. Check out the post from something called SurgeXperiences. Who knew there was a blog carnival about surgical stuff? (And could that be less technical? "Surgical stuff"?)