ACADEMIC INTERNAL MEDICINE INSIGHT

Mid-Atlantic Medical Museums

he mid-Atlantic region offers an unusually 1800s (used in the mistaken belief that they could Elmer H. Grimm Sr. Pharmacy Museum large number of museums dedicated to cure deafness), and a variety of beautiful medical University of School of Pharmacy preserving and disseminating the history illustrations in several media. Pittsburgh, PA of medicine. These museums range from Online: museum.pharmacy.pitt.edu/museum/ Tthe tiny, self-guided displays of the two-room Pest Center for the History of Foot Care default.html House Museum, located in the midst of a historic and Foot Wear The Grimm Museum is a small room packed with old- cemetery in downtown Lynchburg, VA, to such major College of Podiatric Medicine fashioned pharmaceutical machinery, medicines, and institutions as the Smithsonian Institution and the , PA other concoctions dating back to the early 20th century. National Institutes of Health, both in Washington, DC. Online: podiatry.temple.edu/shoe_museum/shoe_ museum.html The School of Pharmacy also For those interested in Civil War-era medical maintains a display case with artifacts documenting practices, this region is a bonanza with the National The museum collection features 250 pairs of shoes, Jonas Salk’s discovery of the polio vaccine. Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, MD, and including celebrity footwear and extreme styles the National Museum of Health and Medicine in through the centuries. Highlights of the collection Fort Ward Museum and Historic Site Washington, DC, displaying major collections from include 200-year-old French sabots (the wooden Alexandria, VA that era. The Clara Barton National Historic Site shoes that gave birth to the expression “sabotage”), Online: oha.ci.alexandria.va.us/fortward/ miniature salesman samples, and the size 18 shoes (Glen Echo, MD) and a smaller collection at the Fort Fort Ward is the best preserved of the ring of Union that once belonged to a circus giant. Open by Ward Museum (Alexandria, VA) also help tell the forts and batteries built during the Civil War to appointment only. story of medical care at that time. protect the capital. The accompanying museum collection features a permanent display on medical Sobering to physicians and tourists alike, these Clara Barton National Historic Site care for the Civil War soldier. Highlights include an museums are essential reminders the responsibility Glen Echo, MD amputation kit with several bone saws, a rare leg of caregivers to protect both body and dignity. But, Online: www.nps.gov/clba splint with its original label, and photos documenting as a visit to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, PA, A historic house museum—the first headquarters the town of Alexandria’s use as a major hospital surely points out, people visit medical museums also of the American Red Cross and the home of Ms. center for the Union Army. to remember the awe-inspiring diversity and frailty of Barton until her death in 1912. The home served as one’s own flesh. a warehouse and headquarters for the Red Cross, The What follows is a list of these strange and wonderful combining domestic and business functions in one Philadelphia, PA collections. All of these museums offer surprises. handsome building. Online: www.fi.edu Of particular note are the tiny dentures of Lavinia Collections of this science museum include a giant Warren, the woman who became Mrs. Tom Thumb, at Colonial Williamsburg Pasteur and Galt Apothecary walk-through human heart, originally built in 1954 the National Museum of Dentistry in Baltimore, MD. and renovated in 2004. At two stories, it is the Clara Barton’s Red Cross headquarters in Glen Echo, Williamsburg, VA Online: www.colonialwilliamsburg.org/Almanack/ largest walk-through heart in the country and would MD, with its efficient storage of relief supplies, gives be the accurate size for a person 220 feet tall. the impression of a ship ready for a long voyage. But places/hb/hbpast.cfm it is the human specimens that pull most strongly: The reconstructed 1775 apothecary shop still stands Museum of Nursing History the murderer’s brain preserved in a glass bottle at on its original site. Costumed interpreters give Friends Hospital the Mütter, for example, or the shattered leg bone at information and demonstrations. The collections Philadelphia, PA the National Museum of Health and Medicine, which include British Delft drug storage jars, antique Online: www.nursinghistory.org/index.htm the wounded soldier carefully preserved to place it implements, medical books, and a jar of live This archival museum of donated memorabilia personally in the museum’s care (on the anniversary medicinal leeches. (books, documents, letters, photos, scrapbooks, of the amputation, according to the accompanying caps and uniforms, medals, and military artifacts) label, the soldier returned to the museum to visit his Didusch Center for Urological History commemorates the progress of nursing. The museum leg bone every year for the rest of his life). American Urological Assocation Linthicum, MD was started in 1974 as a bicentennial project in which John Q. Adams Center for the Online: www.auanet.org/about/didusch.cfm nurses from across the United States were invited to History of Otolaryngology contribute. The museum’s collections feature drawings, texts, and American Academy of Otolaryngology— urologic memorabilia, including historic cystoscopes, Museum of Small Town Life Head and Neck Surgery operating resectoscopes, and microscopes. Displays Dover, DE Alexandria, VA on the development of treatment and research Online: www.destatemuseums.org/information/ Online: www.entnet.org/museum change annually, timed to coincide with the small_town_life.shtml The museum collection features hearing aids, surgical association’s annual meeting. Housed in a former Presbyterian Sunday school, this instruments, and rare books. Highlights include ear museum recreates a 19th century wood plank Main trumpets, electro-therapeutic devices from the late Street with five shops common to most small towns. 16 VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2 • 2006

In addition to the print shop, woodworking shop, National Museum of Civil War Medicine The museum is a federal townhouse that was home general store, and post office, the collection includes Frederick, MD to Philip Syng Physick, MD, the “Father of American a pharmacy with samples from seven different Online: www.civilwarmed.org Surgery,” from 1815 through 1837. Collections apothecaries throughout Delaware. The pharmacy feature Dr. Physick’s pioneering stomach pump and Renovated and expanded in 2000, this museum displays patent medicines, show globes, and devices other surgical instruments he designed or modified. illustrates the experiences of surgeons, medical used to mix drugs and make compounds. The house includes period rooms, a medical museum support staff, and patients on both sides of the on the second floor, and a large city garden with a conflict. Collections include medical equipment, Mütter Museum grotto and statuary. One of the foremost surgeons photographs, camp re-creations, and memorabilia The College of Physicians of Philadelphia of his time, Dr. Physick’s patients included Dolly from Civil War hospitals. Panels throughout the Philadelphia, PA Madison, Benjamin Rush, MD, Chief Justice John museum highlight the military career of Union Private Online: www.collphyphil.org/mutter.asp Marshall, and President Andrew Jackson. Peleg Bradford. Other exhibits focus on medical The museum’s collections feature wet and dry human school education, evacuation of the wounded, field Stabler-Ledbeater Apothecary Museum biological specimens and medical models used as hospitals, and embalming. A second museum site, Alexandria, VA teaching tools. Highlights include a plaster cast the Pry House Field Hospital Museum, is located on Online: www.apothecarymuseum.org/ of Chang and Eng Bunker (the original Siamese the grounds of Antietam National Battlefield. Twins), the preserved body of the “Soap Lady,” the The museum is an apothecary shop in its original tallest skeleton on display in North America, and the National Museum of Dentistry location, which operated from 1792 through 1933. Chevalier Jackson Collection of Swallowed Objects. Baltimore, MD Collections include pill rollers, mortars and pestles, The museum’s accurate motto is: “Disturbingly Online: www.dentalmuseum.umaryland.edu drug mills, carboys and medical glassware. The Informative.” apothecary served the George Washington family, The museum’s collections include “Iron Mouth” James Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, among others. National Institutes of Health (NIH) circus exhibits, Andy Warhol’s prints of St. Apollonia US National Library of Medicine (the Patron Saint of Dentistry), historic dental tools Stonestreet Museum of 19th Bethesda, MD and toothbrushes (including some gold-plated ones Century Medicine Online: www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/about/exhibition/ owned by Queen Victoria), and four sets of George Rockville, MD index.html Washington’s false teeth. Online: www.montgomeryhistory.org/stonestreet.html

NIH features changing exhibitions on the history of National Museum of Health and Medicine This 1852 one-room Gothic Revival physician’s office medicine. While NIH does not have a permanent Building 54, Walter Reed Army Medical Center documents the developments in medical science collection, on-staff scholars create new and original Washington, DC during the career of Edward E. Stonestreet, MD, which multimedia exhibits and display borrowed artifacts Online: nmhm.washingtondc.museum spanned from 1852 to 1903, and is administered on a range of diverse topics. Exhibits are typically by the Montgomery County Historical Society. Collections focus on the history and practice of displayed for two years at a time. The current exhibit, Collections include a Civil War amputation kit, a real American medicine, military medicine, and current “Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body,” will be display skeleton, and patent medicines. A costumed medical research. Highlights include the bullet that open through 2008. Films and lecture programs as interpreter portrays Dr. Stonestreet on the second ended Lincoln’s life, extensive Civil War anatomical well as web displays accompany each exhibition. Sunday of every month. specimens, microscopes from the past 400 years, National Museum of American History exhibits on front-line wartime practices, and an University of Maryland School of Smithsonian Institution, Division of enormous hairball removed from the stomach of a Nursing Living History Museum Health and Medicine 12-year-old girl. Baltimore, MD Washington, DC Online: nursing.umaryland.edu/offices/development/ The Pest House Medical Museum Online: americanhistory.si.edu museum/history.htm Old City Cemetery The museum will be closed to the public from Labor Lynchburg, VA The museum preserves the history of the school Day 2006 through sometime in 2008. However, most Online: www.gravegarden.org/pesthouse.htm (founded in 1889), and chronicles the ongoing items are still available for viewing by researchers evolution of nursing. Docents are retired nurses and One of four small house museums on the grounds and specialists by appointment. Collections include school alumni. Collections include an array of nursing of the Old City Cemetery, the tiny two-room Pest one of Wilhelm Roentgen’s X-ray tubes, penicillin uniforms, medical equipment, photographs, letters, House preserves Lynchburg’s first hospital. The mold from Alexander Fleming’s experiments, Jonas and documents. Salk’s original polio vaccine, the first artificial heart collection includes an intact 1860s medical office and For more information about the mid-Atlantic medical implanted in a human, artificial limbs and implant a re-creation of a quarantine room for patients with museums, please contact Kim Roberts at beltway. devices, bloodletting and dental instruments, beauty contagious diseases. [email protected]. products, veterinary equipment, and the contents of a ✼ The Physick House Museum medieval apothecary shop and an 1890s drug store. Philadelphia, PA Kim Roberts Online: www.philalandmarks.org/phys.aspx Editor Beltway Poetry Quarterly 17