The Army Medical Museum : a history / by D.S. Lamb.

  • Daniel Smith Lamb
Date:
[1916?]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The Army Medical Museum : a history / by D.S. Lamb. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    historical; also microscope accessories; anthropometrical ap¬ paratus. Clinical thermometers, stethoscopes, ophthalmoscopes, sphygmomanometers, instruments for vaccination and hypodermic - syringes, all historical ; besides instruments generally. Also fac¬ similes of the instruments found at Pompeii. Military medical chests and pouches of different nations ; am¬ bulances and litters also of different nations ; missiles and weapons of different nations. A series of Buchhold preparations of parasites and morbid an¬ atomy in capsules. A series of rachitic pelves. Sections of bone showing internal structure. Casts of skulls, racial. A series of frozen sections and dissections. A miscellaneous series, including, among other specimens, a plaster cast of the left humerus of the African explorer Living¬ stone, showing healed fracture ; model of the brain of the deaf, dumb and blind Laura Bridgman ; the injured parts in the case of John Wilkes Booth ; the fractured bones of the leg of General Sickles ; the bones and enlarged spleen of Guiteau, the assassin of Garfield, and many other interesting specimens. The Museum has been a great educator in apatomy and pathol¬ ogy. It is open to the public and is visited every year by thous¬ ands of persons, who carry away with them more or less valuable information, and no doubt impart it to others. Physicians and students consult the individual specimens; specimens almost without number have been shown to this Society; specimens without number have been sent to meetings of many other scien¬ tific bodies ; many specimens have been used as the basis of illus¬ trations in many publications, both in this country and abroad. The Museum laboratories have, through their microscopical and bacteriological work, given a mass of information to both mil¬ itary surgeons and civil practitioners. Besides all this, there is a sentimental side. The old soldier of the Civil War, or his children or children’s children, still visit the Museum, to look upon the fractured bone or amputated limb, pathetic token of his part in the great fight for the Union. So in more ways than one it may be said that the wisdom of Dr. Hammond in founding the Museum in 1862, 53 years ago, seems fully justified. Dr. F. H. Garrison, of the Library of the Surgeon General’s Office, said that the Medical Society as well as Dr. Lamb was to be congratulated upon the presentation of this exhaustive and valuable paper, which no one but its author could have written. It presupposed a life long acquaintance with the official records and a memory of events that went back to the Civil War. Any one familiar with the nature of public records would realize that it needed close knowledge of these to get anything of value out of them, and it was probable that no later official could deal with this part of the subject so well. For a long time Dr. Lamb had
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