Tuesday, March 11, 2008

"A Repository for Bottled Monsters" Weblog, 2008






If you have not already found your way over, I highly recommend you visit The National Museum of Health and Medicine's new (and picturesquely titled) blog "A Repository for Bottled Monsters." However did they come up with that name, you may ask? From the website:

It's historical. I found it in a quote from one of the former curators... He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

Visit the blog to read the complete quote, as well as postings on WWII Venereal Diseases, book and museum reviews, news on upcoming exhibitions, and much more. Also, don't forget to visit (and revisit!) their Flickr pages, which are updated daily and contain an amazing number of wonder-inducing images, complete with informative captions. You can find them here, here, and here.

All above images from "Bottled Monsters" and NMHM's Flickr pages.

3 comments:

Mike Rhode said...

Thanks for the kind words. The museum's official website is actually http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum

I didn't pick it. ;^)

JE said...

Thanks for letting me know! Link changed. Great work over there; really nice to see medical museums entering the digital age in such an exciting way. Very exciting stuff!

Anonymous said...

This is wonderful!