Mobilizing the Museum: The Professional and Public Display of Military Medicine in America during World War I (original) (raw)

The United States Army Medical Museum, founded in 1862, was recognized internationally as the premier medical museum. In 1914, the British Medical History Committee formed to preserve knowledge generated by World War I deemed this American institution a model to be emulated. Even so, when America entered World War I, a plan was implemented to reinvigorate the fifty-year-old Museum. It led to the Museum's concentration on pathology even as educational departments for motion pictures and photography were being created. The anti-venereal disease film 'Fit to Fight' was especially controversial particularly when shown to non-military audiences. The Museum's location near the Smithsonian Institution in downtown Washington, DC now seemed less desirable and there was a push for a new building on the suburban campus of Walter Reed General Hospital to consolidate medical resources. Thousands of new specimens arrived, a new numbering system for specimens was adopted and new exhibits of wartime concerns such as trench foot were developed. The Museum contributed to the diagnosis of diseases during the war, and publication of The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War afterwards. World War I set the Museum firmly on the road to becoming a pathological institute. Meanwhile, as a 'modern' medical research institution, little value was seen in some of the earlier collections, and staff began discarding material -- especially from the Civil War. Changes in medicine made the Museum's traditional wide-ranging roles and relevancy including memorialisation diminish, as its importance in pathology grew stronger. Yet showing the value of traditional museum collections, lung specimens collected during the war recently were used for DNA typing of the 'Spanish' influenza. With unlimited access to Museum records and pertinent military documents, the authors analyze these developments, especially in light of the evolving intersection of medicine, museology and popular culture.