History of the Division of Medical Sciences: United States National Museum Bulletin 240, Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, paper 43, 1964Hamarneh, Sami Khalaf
History
History of the Division of Medical Sciences: United States National Museum Bulletin 240, Contributions from the Museum of History and Technology, paper 43, 1964
Hamarneh, Sami Khalaf
Museum of History and Technology (U.S.). Division of Medical Sciences
He continued his efforts to collect more specimens of interest to
medical history and to contribute to the literature. Among exhibited
specimens in 1941 were a powder paper-crimping machine, a portable drug
crusher, an odd device for spreading plaster on cloth, a pill-coating
apparatus, various suppository molds, a lozenge cutter, and an ingenious
Seidlitz powder machine. The derivation of medicinal drugs from animal,
vegetable, and mineral sources was also depicted, as were synthetic
materials and their intermediates. Basic prescription materials were
displayed, and rows of glass-enclosed cases held samples of crude
botanical drugs from almost every part of the globe with explanatory
cards giving brief, concise descriptions. The exhibition provided
medical and pharmaceutical students about to take state-board
examinations, the opportunity to study the subject in detail, especially
the enormous collection of _materia medica_ samples.[15] Also in 1941,
Eli Lilly and Company donated an exhibit on the medical treatment of
various types of anemia. In the same year, a diorama including a
hypochlorinator for purification of water on a farm was installed in the
gallery. In 1942, the first Emerson iron lung (developed in 1931 by John
Haven Emerson) for artificial respiration was acquired by the Division.
The Division acquired, in 1944, the first portable x-ray machine known
to have been operated successfully on the battlefield, as well as other
x-ray equipment and early medicine chests.
[Illustration: Figure 11.--OLD PUBLIC HEALTH EXHIBITION installed in the
gallery about 1924. (Smithsonian photo 19952.)]
[Illustration: Figure 12.--THE HALL OF HEALTH, reestablished and opened
in November 1957. (Smithsonian photo 44931.)]
[Illustration: Figure 13.--EARLY EXHIBIT ON HOMEOPATHY showing its
history, methods and remedies which was installed about 1929.
(Smithsonian photo 27049.)]
Without a doubt, the most outstanding accession in the field of
pharmaceutical history during Dr. Whitebread's years of service was the
acquisition of the E. R. Squibb and Sons old apothecary shop. Most of
the baroque fixtures, including the stained-glass windows with
Hessian-Nassau coats of arms and wrought-iron frames, were part of the
mid-18th-century cathedral pharmacy "Muenster Apotheke" in Freiburg im
Breisgau, Germany. It was offered for sale in September 1930 by Dr. Jo
Mayer of Wiesbaden, Germany, who was an enthusiastic collector of
antiques, especially those related to the health professions. Earlier
that year, a historian of pharmacy and chemistry, Fritz Ferchl of
Mittenwald, Germany, had published a series of scholarly and informative
articles on the Meyer collection in which the outstanding specimens were
beautifully portrayed and thoroughly described (see bibliography).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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