2006 Staff Members on the Go

Several members of the museum's staff recently received awards for federal length of service at a ceremony presided over by COL Renata Greenspan, director of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Left to right are Alan Hawk, the museum's historical collections manager, 20 years; Mike Rhode, the museum's archivist, 20 years; Adrianne Noe, Ph.D., the museum's director, 20 years; Donna White, the museum's executive administrator, 35 years; and Archie Fobbs, the museum's neuroanatomical collections manager, 10 years. Not pictured is museum staff member Donna Quist, the historical collections specialist, 30 years.

Jeff Reznick, Ph.D., the museum's senior curator, has been elected to the Disability Workgroup of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO). A national non-profit association representing 3000 local public health agencies, NACCHO works to support efforts that protect and improve the health of all people and all communities. NACCHO's Disability Workgroup specifically offers expert guidance to NACCHO and NACCHO grantees in developing and implementing projects that advance the health of individuals with disabilities.

After 10 years on staff at the museum, first as assistant curator and more recently as curator of the museum’s anatomical collections, Lenore Barbian, Ph.D., has assumed the position of a tenure-track faculty member at Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, where she will introduce a new forensic anthropology program in conjunction with the university's criminal justice and applied media arts programs.

Jeff Reznick, Ph.D., the museum’s senior curator, spoke to the Association of the Oldest Inhabitants of Washington D.C., at their monthly luncheon meeting in June. Reznick spoke about the museum’s Civil War collections, and specifically those relating to Walt Whitman and his experiences as a nurse in D.C. hospitals during the war.

More than 20, including 14 students and teachers from Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va., attended a lunchtime lecture at the National Museum of Civil War Medicine in Frederick, Md. to hear a presentation by Mike Rhode, the museum’s archivist, entitled “The Rise and Fall of the Army Medical Museum. ” He discussed the establishment of the Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health And Medicine) during the Civil War, its growth when located in Ford’s Theater, and merger with the Surgeon General’s Library (now the National Library of Medicine), that led to the necessity of a new building that was among the first to be designed specifically to house a museum, and opened on the National Mall in 1887.

Museum staff participated in the Walter Reed Army Medical Center’s Organization Day on Aug. 4. The museum hosted an information table at the event, and Ashley Matthews (imaging technician), Cathy Sorge (assistant archivist), and Steve Hill (exhibits manager) talked to visitors about the museum’s collections and tour opportunities and distributed brochures. Andrea Schierkolk (tour program manager) and Courtney MacGregor (public affairs specialist) also participated in the activities.

Alan Hawk, the museum’s historical collections manager wrote an article that was published in the April 2006 issue of Military Medicine, entitled “The Great Disease Enemy, Kak’ke (Beriberi) and the Imperial Japanese Army.” The article discusses a disease called beriberi, which plagued the Japanese Army during the Russo-Japanese War and World War II. The article details how Japanese military officials worked to prevent the disease through an improved diet and lessons in nutrition during the Russo-Japanese War, however, beriberi again plagued Japanese soldiers in WWII, due to poor logistics and unpalatable dietary supplements.

Jeff Reznick, Ph.D., the museum's senior curator, has been named an Honorary Research Fellow in the Center for First World War Studies of the Department of Modern History, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. His new book, Healing the Nation: Soldiers and the Culture of Caregiving in Britain during the First World War, was recently reviewed by Seth Koven of Villanova University, who described it as an “intelligent and well-researched study.” Reznick’s “first-rate analysis of hospital magazines — their form, content, editorial policies, circulation, and readers — provides a model of how historians can reread traditional sources to uncover otherwise inaccessible aspects of the history of disabled persons.”

Lenore Barbian, Ph.D., the museum’s curator of anatomical collections, directed the 2006 Forensic Anthropology course held at the National Transportation Safety Board’s Training Academy in Ashburn, Va. The annual course provides an overview of the analysis and identification of human remains from criminal and legal contexts. During the course, local and national faculty lecture on a wide range of topics including search and recovery techniques, trauma interpretation, bone DNA, and mass disaster victim identification. More than 100 of the museum’s anatomical specimens along with collections from the Smithsonian Institution and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences are used to teach basic techniques of skeletal analysis during the hands-on laboratory sessions. Forensic anthropologists from the University of Florida, Mercyhurst College, Colorado State University, Boston’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, and the Smithsonian served as faculty for this year’s course. The course offers continuing medical education credits (CME) and is sponsored by the American Registry of Pathology and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

Jeffrey S. Reznick, Ph.D., the museum's senior curator, and Michael G. Rhode, the museum's chief archivist, presented papers at "The First World War and Popular Culture," a conference held at the University of Newcastle in the United Kingdom. Reznick spoke on the topic of “American Military-Hospital Magazines and Newspapers during the First World War," while Rhode spoke on “Mobilizing the Museum: The Professional and Public Display of Military Medicine in America during World War I."

Archie Fobbs, curator of the museum’s neuroanatomical collections, presented an abstract that was written in collaboration with Dr. John I. Johnson and Mr. John Morris, both of Michigan State University, at the Society for Neuroscience meetings in Washington DC. The research effort described in the abstract was made possible by funding from the National Science Foundation. The abstract, entitled, “Similar distinctive arrangements of sensory regions in cerebral cortex of artiodactyl sheep and cetacean dolphins,” discusses similarities between the brains of domestic sheep and bottle-nosed dolphins, and suggests that a common ancestor might exist between them.

Archie Fobbs, the museum curator of neuroanatomical collections, has coauthored a children’s activity book entitled, “The Marine Mammal Brain Game.” The book is a teacher-student activity that allows students to compare the brains and behaviors of dolphins, sea lions, and manatees. The game is designed for students in grade 5 and up, and the contents of the game meet requirements set by the National Science Education Standards.

The book is a collaborative effort on behalf of Melissa Demetrikopoulos and Lee Morris at the Institute for Biomedical Philosophy in Atlanta, John Johnson at the department of radiology at Michigan State University and Archie Fobbs at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. For more information on obtaining the game, please contact Melissa Demetrikopoulos at mdemetr@BioPhi.org.

Steven Solomon, the museum’s public affairs officer, gave a radio interview for NPR on Civil War General Daniel E. Sickles, telling the story of the general and how his leg came to be on display in the museum.

Sickles, Union Third Army Corps commander, was struck by a cannonball during the battle of Gettysburg. Sickles was on horseback when the 12-pound ball severely fractured his lower right leg. Sickles quieted his horse, dismounted, and was taken to a shelter where Surgeon Thomas Sims amputated the leg just above the knee. Shortly after the operation, the Army Medical Museum received Sickles' leg in a small box bearing a visiting card with the message "With the compliments of Major General D.E.S." The amputation healed rapidly and by September of 1863 Sickles returned to military service. For many years on the anniversary of the amputation, Sickles visited his leg at the museum.

Lenore Barbian, Ph.D., the museum's acting curator of anatomical collections, gave the Associated Press a tour of some of the more famous artifacts not on display in the museum's public space. She showed them the skeleton of Ham, the first chimpanzee in space, along with the presidential artifacts and a "shrunken head" from South America. The tour was taped for a segment released nationally on the AP wire service Feb. 26, 2006.

The museum’s director, Adrianne Noe, Ph.D., has been awarded a position on the Board of Directors at the Academy of Medicine of Washington, DC. The academy was organized in 1935, “for the advancement of the science and art of medicine and to promote the mutual exchange of knowledge between medical and other scientific groups.” The organization consists of a variety of leaders and experts in the field of medicine and para-medical sciences, all of whom have made a contribution to the advancement of their fields. The Academy’s meetings provide an opportunity for the exchange of ideas on current medical issues that can be discussed and debated by its members, and her role on the Board will ensure that the museum is a vital element in the area of medical issues.

Alan Hawk, the museum’s historical collections manager, was interviewed for his knowledge on the shoe fluoroscope, currently on display in the museum's Medical and Diagnostic Treatment Technology exhibit. The interview was taped for an "engineering disasters" segment on the History Channels’ Modern Marvels program in which Hawk spoke about the common use of the fluoroscope in shoe stores in the 1950s and demonstrated how the machine worked.

Jeff Reznick, Ph.D., the museum's senior curator, presented a lecture that explored the life of Walt Whitman through the anatomical specimens at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Taken from the men nursed by Whitman during his volunteer service in Washington, D.C.'s Civil War hospitals, these specimens shed new light on Whitman, the soldiers he cared for, and the makeshift institutions of his day, where, as Whitman wrote "every cot had its history." His talk was based on the new display of these specimens in the museum's permanent Civil War exhibit.

The program was held at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Library for the History Network's Washington, D.C., Historical Studies Conference.

Mike Rhode, the museum’s archivist, has developed an hour-long lecture entitled, “The Rise and Fall of the Army Medical Museum and Library,” which illuminates the establishment of the Army Medical Museum during the Civil War, its growth in Ford’s Theater and its merge with the Surgeon General’s Library (now the National Library of Medicine), leading to the necessity of a new building.

The building that housed the Army Medical Museum and Library, designed by Adolf Cluss, opened on the Mall in 1887. The Museum and the Library remained in the building until the 1960s when the building was demolished to make way for the Hirshhorn Museum. Rhode discussed the building, the history of its eighty years of existence, its designation as a national historic landmark, and its destruction.

Rhode has given this lecture at the Charles Sumner School, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History and to the National Museum of Health and Medicine’s docents.