Digital Media and Humanities

The National Museum of Health and Medicine http://www.medicalmuseum.mil/

One of the first institutional embodiments of the history of medicine in this country was the Library and Museum of the Office of U.S. Army Surgeon General, which dates from the 1860s. By the late nineteenth century, the Library and Museum were housed in a Victorian red brick masterpiece on the National Mall in Washington. They split after World War II and eventually decamped to the suburbs. The library became the National Library of Medicine, in Bethesda, MD, part of the National Institutes of Health and no longer a military affair. The museum became the National Museum of Health and Medicine, initially part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) and housed at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center on the northernmost reaches of 16th Street, still within the city limits. In 2011 it was relocated to Silver Spring, MD, as AFIP disbanded and the Walter Reed medical facilities moved. The museum remains part of the Department of Defense.

The museum’s current building was newly built for the purpose, and provides a great experience for coming close to the wonderful collections. I’ve been fortunate to visit both the 16th Street and Silver Spring incarnations. Most visitors will likely not go to the physical site, however, but encounter the museum through its website. That’s where this review will focus.

Modern war drives medical innovation. The Civil War was the foundry of nineteenth century American medicine, and the initial mission of the National Museum of Health and Medicine was to document Civil War medicine by developing core collections of documentation, photographs, artifacts, and specimens and to show the medical cost, as well as the recovery, from the war. The military created it and gave it a home as well as a cadre of collectors in the field. The museum has continued in its mission to collect military medicine, and the collections are one of the nation’s treasures.

But, who is this museum for? Looking at the website, at times it is hard to say. Museums have many different constituencies, and this one no less. However, the website does not readily work with the visitor to sort these out. The first impression is that the museum is for the American military. The first story I encountered upon entering the website was an illustrated account of the 2015 administrative transition of the museum from one branch of the Department of Defense to another, complete with military ceremony and speaker in uniform. Another part of the site provides a checklist for holding military ceremonies at the museum, while a major exhibition site has as its lead this quotation: “The preservation of [Trauma] Bay II, [Balad, Iraq] is a great tribute to all the Soldiers, Airmen, Sailors and Marines treated in that particular bay, as well as to the military medical community.” Of course it is—but it is more than that, as well!

Elsewhere, the museum displays a breadth of reach and public engagement that goes beyond the military focus, programmatically and logistically. The museum is open to the public on every day save Christmas, hosts special programs on federal holidays, and has an active tours program. Like many similar institutions, they have started a monthly “science café” to engage the public and offer extended classes on forensics, medical illustration, anatomical casts, and Civil War medicine. The museum provides programs and special activities for children and families. Their volunteer docents look like they are having a great time! The content for these programs naturally grows out of the museum’s core mission and collections: recent programs have been on Civil War medicine and the Lincoln assassination, both part of the museum’s founding mission and connected to sesquicentennial activities; and on brain trauma, a central concern of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars and a current collecting focus. Yet the broader connections are always made: to American history writ large, and to issues of identity theft and Alzheimer’s, for example. The museum’s programs highlight materials from the collections, and expand upon them in an unforced...