This article contains content that is written like an advertisement .(August 2023) |
Location within Maryland | |
Established | 1862 (new building, 2011) |
---|---|
Location | 2500 Linden Lane, Silver Spring, Maryland |
Coordinates | 39°0′32″N77°3′14″W / 39.00889°N 77.05389°W |
Type | Medicine, Military medicine |
Visitors | 40,000–50,000 annually |
Public transit access | Forest Glen |
Website | medicalmuseum |
The National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) is a museum in Silver Spring, Maryland, near Washington, D.C. [1] The museum was founded by U.S. Army Surgeon General William A. Hammond as the Army Medical Museum (AMM) in 1862; [2] it became the NMHM in 1989 and relocated to its present site at the Army's Forest Glen Annex in 2011. [3] An element of the Defense Health Agency [4] (DHA), the NMHM is a member of the National Health Sciences Consortium. [5]
The AMM was established during the American Civil War [3] as a center for the collection of specimens for research in military medicine and surgery. [6] In 1862, Hammond directed medical officers in the field to collect "specimens of morbid anatomy...together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed" and to forward them to the newly founded museum for study. [6] The AMM's first curator, John H. Brinton, visited mid-Atlantic battlefields and solicited contributions from doctors throughout the Union Army. During and after the war, AMM staff took pictures of wounded soldiers showing the effects of gunshot wounds as well as results of amputations and other surgical procedures. The information collected was compiled into six volumes of The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion , published between 1870 and 1883. [6]
During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, AMM staff engaged in various types of medical research. They pioneered in photomicrographic techniques, established a library and cataloging system which later formed the basis for the National Library of Medicine (NLM), and led the AMM into research on infectious diseases while discovering the cause of yellow fever. They contributed to research on vaccinations for typhoid fever, and during World War I, AMM staff were involved in vaccinations and health education campaigns, including major efforts to combat sexually transmissible diseases. [6]
By World War II, research at the AMM focused increasingly on pathology. In 1946 the AMM became a division of the new Army Institute of Pathology (AIP), which became the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) in 1949. The AMM's library and part of its archives were transferred to the National Library of Medicine when that institution was created in 1956. The AMM became the Medical Museum of the AFIP in 1949, the Armed Forces Medical Museum in 1974, and the NMHM in 1989. [6] During its peak years on the National Mall in the 1960s, every year the museum saw "as many as 400,000 to 500,000 people coming through". But after its moves to increasingly obscure and out-of-the-way sites, it fell into a period of relative neglect. By the 1990s, it was attracting only between 40,000 and 50,000 visitors a year. [7]
In 1989, C. Everett Koop (in his last year as Surgeon General) commissioned the "National Museum of Health and Medicine Foundation", a private, nonprofit organization to explore avenues for its future development and revitalization, intending to ultimately returning its collection to a venue on the National Mall. [8] Proposed was “a site on land that is located east of and adjacent to the Hubert H. Humphrey Building (100 Independence Avenue, Southwest, in the District of Columbia)”. [9] In 1993, a draft bill authored by Sen. Edward Kennedy proposed $21.8 million for moving the existing collection to a new facility to be constructed on that site. That bill, however, was never introduced owing to political difficulties including objections from Constance Breuer—widow of Marcel Breuer, architect of the Humphrey Building—who objected to the view obstruction that the proposed construction would entail. A letter from the Department of Defense to Koop in the mid-1990s, expressed hope that the NMHM exhibits would "one day be provided the appropriate and prominent home they deserve back at the National Mall in the new National Health Museum". The DoD backed away from contributing to funding a new museum. [10] The foundation was superseded by a new organization, dedicated to creating a National Health Museum, that focused on public health education. Although the effort for a physical museum appears to be defunct, [11] the museum maintains a virtual presence. [12]
Due to the closure of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, National Museum of Health and Medicine relocated—for the tenth time—to U.S. Army Garrison-Forest Glen in Silver Spring, Montgomery County, Maryland. [13]
Authority over the Forest Glen garrison was transferred from WRAMC to Fort Detrick in October 2008. The NMHM closed its exhibits [14] on April 3, 2011, and reopened in a new building on September 15, 2011. On October 1, 2015, the NMHM became part of the Defense Health Agency. [4]
The NMHM embodies five collections consisting of about 25 million artifacts, including 5,000 skeletal specimens, 8,000 preserved organs, [15] 12,000 items of medical equipment, an archive of historic medical documents, and collections related to neuroanatomy and developmental anatomy. The museum's most famous artifacts relate to President Abraham Lincoln and his assassination on April 14, 1865, by John Wilkes Booth. [16]
On display is a copy by sculptor Avarel Fairbanks of Lincoln's life mask and hands made by Leonard Volk in 1860, the bullet fired from the Deringer pistol which ended the president's life, the probe used by the U.S. Army Surgeon General to locate the bullet during autopsy, pieces of Lincoln's hair and skull, and the autopsy surgeon's shirt cuff, stained with Lincoln's blood. [17] [18] In 2010, the heirs of American pathologist Thomas Harvey (1912–2007) transferred all of his holdings constituting the remains of Albert Einstein's brain to the NMHM, including 14 photographs of the whole brain (which is now in fragments) never before revealed to the public. [19] [20] Also on display is a small portion of Booth's spine, [21] surgically removed to dislodge the bullet that killed him after his escape from justice ended at Port Royal, Virginia, fired from Union soldier Boston Corbett.
Museum collections include:
Museum exhibition Galleries feature several permanent exhibits alongside several rotating displays. [27]
In this category, the museum houses a notable holding brought directly from the Middle East, “Trauma Bay II, Balad, Iraq”. The exhibit features a section of the actual emergency room tent used at Balad, Iraq, from 2003 to 2007. These operating theaters throughout Iraq have posting survival rates topping 95%. Arrangements were made to ship these items from Iraq when a visiting US Congressional delegation was moved by the stories they had heard. [28]
Past exhibits include; [34] [35]
The museum offers programs on topics in medical, scientific, and historical subjects. It is for children and adults.
The museum is located at 2500 Linden Lane in Silver Spring, Maryland, one mile outside the District of Columbia. [46] It requires a photo ID for all adult visitors and is open to the public. [47] It is open from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. every day except Christmas (when it is closed), and admission is free. [48]
Pathology is the study of disease and injury. The word pathology also refers to the study of disease in general, incorporating a wide range of biology research fields and medical practices. However, when used in the context of modern medical treatment, the term is often used in a narrower fashion to refer to processes and tests that fall within the contemporary medical field of "general pathology", an area that includes a number of distinct but inter-related medical specialties that diagnose disease, mostly through analysis of tissue and human cell samples. Idiomatically, "a pathology" may also refer to the predicted or actual progression of particular diseases, and the affix pathy is sometimes used to indicate a state of disease in cases of both physical ailment and psychological conditions. A physician practicing pathology is called a pathologist.
Fort Sam Houston is a U.S. Army post in San Antonio, Texas. Known colloquially as "Fort Sam," it is named for the U.S. Senator from Texas, U.S. Representative from Tennessee, Tennessee and Texas governor, and first president of the Republic of Texas, Sam Houston.
Plastination is a technique or process used in anatomy to preserve bodies or body parts, first developed by Gunther von Hagens in 1977. The water and fat are replaced by certain plastics, yielding specimens that can be touched, do not smell or decay, and even retain most properties of the original sample.
Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals (MASH) were U.S. Army field hospital units conceptualized in 1946 as replacements for the obsolete World War II-era Auxiliary Surgical Group hospital units. MASH units were in operation from the Korean War to the Gulf War before being phased out in the early 2000s. Each MASH unit had 60 beds, as well as surgical, nursing, and other enlisted and officer staff available at all times. MASH units filled a vital role in military medicine by providing support to army units upwards of 10,000 to 20,000 soldiers. These units had a low mortality rate compared to others, as the transportation time to hospitals was shorter, resulting in fewer patients dying within the "Golden Hour", the first hour after an injury is first sustained, which is referred to in trauma as the "most important hour". The U.S. Army deactivated the last MASH unit on February 16, 2006, and the successors to Mobile Army Surgical Hospitals are combat support hospitals.
The Royal College of Surgeons of England is an independent professional body and registered charity that promotes and advances standards of surgical care for patients, and regulates surgery and dentistry in England and Wales. The college is located at Lincoln's Inn Fields in London. It publishes multiple medical journals including the Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, the Faculty Dental Journal, and the Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Sir Charles Bell was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist, physiologist, neurologist, artist, and philosophical theologian. He is noted for discovering the difference between sensory nerves and motor nerves in the spinal cord. He is also noted for describing Bell's palsy.
The Library of the Surgeon General's Office, later called the Army Medical Library, was the institutional medical literature repository of the U.S. Army Surgeon General from 1836 to 1956 when it was transformed into the National Library of Medicine.
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A cadaver or corpse is a dead human body. Cadavers are used by medical students, physicians and other scientists to study anatomy, identify disease sites, determine causes of death, and provide tissue to repair a defect in a living human being. Students in medical school study and dissect cadavers as a part of their education. Others who study cadavers include archaeologists and arts students. In addition, a cadaver may be used in the development and evaluation of surgical instruments.
The Siriraj Medical Museum, nicknamed the Museum of Death, is a medical museum in Bangkok, Thailand. Siriraj Medical Museum is open to the public and is a valuable resource for medical professionals and students. This museum consists of seven small medical museums: Siriraj Bimuksthan Museum, Ellis Pathological Museum, Congdon Anatomical Museum, Songkran Niyomsan Forensic Medicine Museum, Parasitological Museum, Touch Museum in Honor of Queen Mother Sirikit, and Sood Sangvichien Prehistoric Museum Laboratory.
The Musée d'Anatomie Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière was a museum of anatomy formerly located on the eighth floor of the Faculty of Medicine, Paris V René Descartes University, 45, rue des Saints-Pères, 6th arrondissement of Paris, France. It was the largest anatomy museum in France. It was closed around 2005, with all its exhibits going into storage.
The Hunterian Museum is a museum of anatomical specimens in London, located in the building of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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