2007 - Media

Pictures of Hope

The National Museum of Health and Medicine has more than 24 million specimens and artifacts in its collection -- none more touching than this drawing by Nicklas Harkins at right.

"I am ten years old and have MPS," Nicklas writes, using shorthand for the disease mucopolysaccharidosis. "My painting of a dragon expresses the courage that everyone needs when they have MPS."

The painting is among 32 pieces of art from around the world featured in the exhibit "Expression of Hope," at the museum through March 2. All of the artists, several of them children, have rare and serious genetic (inherited) disorders that keep their cells from working properly.

The artwork by the kids is particularly inspiring. It shows strength, courage and, yes, hope.

"My Body and My Heart" by Lawrence Huang: "I cannot help people with my body, but I can help them with my heart. I am not tall, but my heart is greater than anyone's. I have no wings, but my heart flies freely."

"Flowers of Hope" by Grant Bowen: "I am eleven years old. I am a swimmer and play basketball and take art once a week. My painting is a bunch of bright flowers. I really like to use bright colors."

By Alexandra Lilovska, untitled: "I am 11 years old and I like very much to paint. My pictures express the beauty of nature and teach us how important it is to help each other."

"A Swallow" by Zih-Jie Li: "This is a swallow taking care of its baby. I hope to grow up as strong and healthy as others. I wish I could fly high as swallows do and be free. . . . I don't like MPS because I can't move around freely."
- Washington Post KidsPost, November 2007

Fabry Patients Find Art Show Is Therapeutic

For Patricia Hand, a 59-year-old art teacher in Seattle, a life-changing moment came several years ago during a routine eye exam -- for her nephew.

A doctor spotted the distinctive whorl on the youngster's cornea that signaled a rare genetic disorder, Fabry disease. Ms. Hand and her sister quickly realized that Fabry disease twisted through the family tapestry.

Decades before, their father had died of kidney failure after a lifetime of suffering from fatigue, an inability to sweat, a defective heart and other mysterious symptoms -- all originally chalked up to rheumatic fever but all consistent with Fabry disease.

With the diagnosis came a new vocabulary, starting with lysosomal storage disorders, a group of genetic diseases that includes Fabry disease and some 50 others. Patients with the disorders are missing certain enzymes that keep cells functioning properly, and many receive enzyme-replacement therapy to keep their diseases from progressing.

Ms. Hand and patients with similar conditions recently contributed to an art exhibit called "Expressions of Hope" on display beginning this month at the National Museum of Health and Medicine. The museum is part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and is known mostly for its vast collection of skeletons, preserved organs, old medical equipment, microscopes and surgical instruments. The exhibit is sponsored by Genzyme Corp., a biotechnology company that produces the enzyme treatment.

For many of the artists, it was an opportunity to raise public awareness and a novel form of psychological healing for diseases that often leave them feeling powerless. Ms. Hand submitted a mixed-media piece, a grid of nine red hearts made of stiff paper, crumpled until pliable and textured, then torn apart and stitched together. "Normally, people think about all the bad things," Ms. Hand said. "They list all the things that are wrong with you, all the symptoms."

Raising public awareness is a key part of the exhibit. About 5,000 rare genetic diseases affect one in 7,000 people, but they often remain undiagnosed for years or even decades because of their obscurity, despite frequently severe and progressive symptoms.

The exhibit features artwork from five continents and by people of all ages. An exuberant painting of a dragon came from Nicklas Harkins, 12, of Vancouver, British Columbia. Nicklas says his dragon, made in art class two years ago, represents the courage required of those with MPS, or Mucopolysaccharidosis.

Six years ago, Kirsten Harkins says, she started to notice that Nicklas, her eldest child, had stiff joints, walked on his toes and had difficulty stretching his arms above his head. Five months later, he was diagnosed with MPS. As Nicklas's symptoms worsened, distorting his facial features and enlarging his spleen so much that it pushed out his stomach, the family waited two years for Canadian regulators to approve a drug to treat him.

"It was the happiest day of our lives, bar none," Mrs. Harkins said of the day her son started treatment. "It makes me emotional just talking about it; knowing that his body had that enzyme that it had been lacking for all those years."

Nicklas visits the hospital once a week for a four-hour transfusion. The cost of the therapy is high, 350,000 Canadian dollars, or about US$371,000, a year, paid by Canada's national health-care system, but it is highly effective for most patients.

"What we find frequently is that once these folks get identified, even with a symptom of mild fatigue or low hemoglobin, they get on therapy and they feel like their life has been renewed," said John Barranger, a professor of genetics at the University of Pittsburgh who helped develop the enzyme-replacement therapy at the National Institutes of Health. "They've been to the fountain of youth, so to speak."

While it might not be the legendary fountain, the art certainly triggers a transformation for Ms. Hand. "There's this shift that happens in the art-making process," she said. "You can look at things from different angles and see different things. And when you have the disease, you can be hopeful, too."
- The Wall Street Journal, November 2007

The Hooke Microscope

Many images are closely associated with the 17th-century English experimentalist Robert Hooke: the hugely enlarged flea, the orderly plant units he named "cells," among others. To create them, Hooke used elaborately gold-stamped and turned microscopes such as the one pictured.

Hooke's images, which persist among the most well-known depictions in all of science, appeared along with other natural and fabricated marvels of the microscopic world in Micrographia (1665). The book was an expression of 30-year-old Hooke's life, complex with both remarkable technical skills and careful inquiry. In the massive volume, Hooke initiated the convention of visualization that characterizes science to this day.

Micrographia was the second publication of the young Royal Society, which Hooke had helped to shape. For 40 years, first as an employee, then as a member, he kept the Society's collections and prepared weekly demonstrations at the request of its members, relying on his considerable technical virtuosity to craft complex devices to pursue their interests in physics, chemistry, geology, astronomy, military science, and biology.

Hooke frequently included microscopy demonstrations, regaling the reigning lights of English science - Newton, Boyle, Wren - with a variety of preparations. He used a number of instruments to extend the range of vision and investigate appearance and behavior at levels unseen by the unaided eye. Although he acknowledged the challenges of spherical and chromatic aberration in the compound microscope, he did basic work to establish the scale and size of otherwise unseen objects and offered hundreds of demonstrations, from plant cells and feathers and fine structures in animals to molds, manufactured items, fossils, and geological materials. Hooke's work initiated a popular interest in microscopy and spurred their commercial production.

Shortly after Micrographia appeared, the wake of the Great Fire of London demanded Hooke's attention as surveyor and planner, but his demonstrations for the Society continued unabated.

He explored the physics expressed in Hooke's Law, he corresponded with Leeuwenhoek, and engaged a vituperative Newton in argument regarding planetary motion, prompting the diarist Samuel Pepys to proclaim that Hooke "is the most and promises the least of any man in the world that I ever saw."
- The Scientist, November 2007

RSV: The First Specimens

It was not odd that an upstate New York farmer would bring a sick Plymouth Rock hen to Peyton Rous at the Rockefeller Institute in 1909, nor that Rous would be interested in the case. Two years earlier, Hungarian veterinarian Joseph Marek had identified the costly, highly transmissible visceral leucosis of the chicken which now bears his name, and a pair of Danish researchers had identified the viral etiology of a chicken leukemia in 1908. Might the chicken hold a revelation about viral-inducing tumors in humans? Rous wondered, even as conventional medical wisdom strongly rejected that possibility.

In Rous's first line of experiments, he transplanted bits of the original hen's breast tumor to other purebred Plymouth Rocks and mixed-bred chickens, producing tumors in the purebred stock alone--which suggested an inherited susceptibility (J Exp Med, 12:696-705, 1910). Subsequently, he demonstrated transmission of malignant new growth from a cell-free filtrate, and how the same virus caused tumors in cartilage and gizzard. Shown in the photograph is a hen's leg with osteochondrosarcoma, which Rous reported in 1912 (J Am Med Assoc, 59; 1793, 1912).

In 1963, Rous presented five preserved specimens to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, where they are now in the collections of the National Museum of Health and Medicine. Three years later, he won the Nobel Prize for his discovery of the first tumor-inducing virus. Other investigators built on the find and delved deeper. David Baltimore and Howard Temin found in Rous Sarcoma Virus (RSV) a strange enzyme--reverse transcriptase--that re-revolutionized understanding of how RNA tumor viruses interact with the DNA of a cell. In his 1989 Nobel lecture, Harold Varmus said that "Rous's virus remains the only retro-virus that could have satisfied the genetic and biochemical criteria for the work we accomplished in the era that preceded molecular cloning."
- The Scientist, October 2007

Unusual Suspect

Dead men do tell tales at military medical museum

Franklin Damann spends his days surrounded by bones, tissue samples and countless silent stories.

It's his job to make sure they are all organized in a way that the silent tales of long-gone humans can be interpreted, and then told, by others who can give voice to the dead and allow them to speak through science.

Damann is a forensic anthropologist and curator of the anatomy department at the National Museum of Health and Medicine, an element of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. The collection he oversees is adjacent to the main museum, which is tucked away on the campus of Walter Army Medical Center and lays claim to artifacts such as the bullet used to assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

As the tall, lanky forensic anthropologist with a Louisiana lilt in his voice winds his way in between the ravines of blue metal cabinets filled with trays of bone fragments, hanging skeletons and work spaces, he is far from the image of a quirky, rumpled museum curator.

In fact, it's easy to jump to the conclusion that he is straight out of the cast of "CSI." One of his colleagues actually jokes about "the CSI effect" on the team's jobs.

But that's where the resemblance ends. The glamorized version of pathology displayed by forensics shows and novels actually makes Damann angry. They distort what the practice really is and give a "false sense of hope about what can be done," he says.

OK, so no calling him "Bones." Check.

But as Damann walks from room to room, pointing out samples of human remains, ranging from a Civil War-era shin shattered by a bullet to a formaldehyde-soaked esophagus with a far-too-large chunk of somebody's last steak dinner still lodged in it, it's clear Damann sees beyond the samples and peers through to the stories, looking for the lessons and information they might hold.

Like any professional organizer, the curator faces a formidable daily challenge: What do you save? "That's probably one of the million-dollar questions," Damann says, watching as a colleague reads through a letter from the late 1800s that correlates to a bone in the collection. Those questions are naturally followed by others: Does an artifact fit the mission? What is the mission of a particular collection? Research only? Research and education? Something else?

One of Damann's goals is to promote the collection through outreach activities, such as using the brain tissue samples in a brain-awareness campaign for school children.

"This to me is an absolutely amazing collection," he says as enters the brain room and walks between the rolling stack shelves containing row upon row of glass coaster-sized slides. Each slide contains a stained slice of brain, both human and non, which researchers can scan and reassemble to study.

Damann is a recent arrival, only three months into his job. He spent the previous six years as a forensic anthropologist for the Department of Defense Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii, where he helped recover and identify remains of missing service members throughout Southeast Asia and northeastern China.

Damann says he will miss the fieldwork associated with recovery missions to Southeast Asia, where he has had such powerful moments as discovering dog tags that had been thought lost forever on the jungle floor.

"But it's just as powerful to go down here and open this collection, and the history that's associated with these collections," he says of his new post.

His fascination with anthropology comes from a very simple observation: "There's not much in this world that humans don't have an impact on."
Washington Business Journal, August 17, 2007

"Currently located on the grounds of the Walter Reed Medical Center, The National Museum of Health & Medicine first opened in 1862.

It's a treasure trove of anatomical specimens and medical instruments.

You can see what smoking and coal mining does to lungs. You'll also see a hair ball taken from a 12 year old girl, a damaged heart, diseased kidneys and livers, and these are just a few examples of what's inside.

As for the advancements in medicine, you can follow the progress in surgical procedures from Civil War time to the present, with a special emphasis on battlefield medicine. You'll see microscopes going back to the 1700s. The bullet that killed President Lincoln and the dental tools of Paul Revere are also on display.

The museum is open every day except December 25th.

Please watch the Monday Morning Video Blog for a short tour of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
WUSA Channel 9, July 17, 2007

"The Dreyer Peptide and Protein Sequencer"

As biochemists during the 1970s delved into the protein chemistry of cell signaling, cycling, and adhesion, they ran into two major obstacles: getting enough purified material for some proteins, and the low molecular weights of others. Interferon, for example, was so difficult to purify that it took more than two decades before its structural characterization. And tiny proteins like angiotensin II (8 amino acids) and the antidiuretic hormone vasopressin (9 amino acids) produced hard-to-interpret protein signatures.

Biochemists were constantly pushing the limits of technology to couple, cleave, extract, and sequence peptides with better sensitivity. Pehr Edman, in 1950, developed a chemical degradation process for amino acid sequencing and built the first automated "sequenator" for that task in 1967. Richard Laursen, at Boston University, improved on Edman's concept in 1971 by immobilizing the study sample on a resin support. This made it possible to investigate smaller peptides, but liquid solvents in the process tended to wash out the sample, making scarce and low-molecular weight peptides difficult to capture.

Then, in 1977, Caltech biochemist William J. Dreyer developed the sequencer seen here. 1 It featured a glass-cartridge reaction chamber with a macroporous support to immobilize peptides. Liquid and gas agents such as phenylisothiocyanate and trimethylamine gas are flowed through the chamber to bind the terminal residue on the peptide chain. Then, after washing, a strong anhydrous acid such as trifluoroacetic acid in vapor form cleaves the residue, which can be extracted with a solvent such as benzene. Drying stages using an inert gas (nitrogen) helped prevent washing out the sample, and the instrument was so sensitive, it could practically count individual ions.

Subsequently, Dreyer's former collaborators, Leroy Hood and Michael Hunkapiller, patented refinements to the highly sensitive instrument and used it to launch a product for Applied Biosystems. The move reportedly resulted in disputes over royalties and friction between the scientists. 2

Dreyer's sequencer is now in the National Museum of Health and Medicine, part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, in Washington, DC.

References
1. W.J. Dreyer, "Peptide or protein sequencing method and apparatus," US patent No. 4,065,412, issued Dec. 27, 1977.
2. Interview with William J. Dreyer, Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives, 2005.
The Scientist, July 2007

"Anybody know whether you can get plexiglass-lung disease from installing museum exhibits? I mean, when you're building a see-through sarcophagus for an object, you create a lot of little curls and shards of plexiglass, what with all the cutting and drilling. What if they make a beeline straight for the old alveoli, like dust from a coal face? This thought came to me last week as I joined the folks at the National Museum of Health and Medicine to help transport and mount a new artifact. That's the museum on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center that may be best known for its "wet tissue" collection -- a human leg swollen with elephantiasis will always be my favorite -- and for specimens from the Civil War, when the museum got its start. It can be a spooky place, what with the skeletons and embryos -- the latter destined to float forever in their formalin-filled glass jars. But it's a fascinating place, too, a testament to both the thousand natural shocks the flesh is heir to and the ways that doctors try to soothe them. I'd been invited to help with something that fell into the second category: a piece of medical equipment called an LSTAT, short for Life Support for Trauma and Treatment. "It's basically a portable ICU," said Alan Hawk, the museum's collection manager. Not much bigger than a stretcher and weighing 180 pounds, the LSTAT contains a ventilator, defibrillator, infusion pump and EKG machine. Alan had had it about a year, a gift from the manufacturer, Integrated Medical Systems. The first step was to go to the museum's warehouse, out Interstate 270 in Montgomery County. Most of the collection is there, stacked toward the ceiling in a setting reminiscent of the final scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark." Crates are labeled with their contents: "U.S. Army Field X-Ray," "Kolff-Brigham Dialysis Machine." A wooden World War I-era wheelchair with a wicker seat sat next to a massive steel contraption that called to mind the unholy union of bank vault and industrial pizza oven. "It's an autoclave used to sterilize instruments in the anthrax lab at Fort Detrick," said Alan. Ah. Best to wash my hands when I get home, I thought. The LSTAT was on a shelf about 20 feet up, in a heavy-duty case covered with FedEx labels. Alan let me drive the forklift a few yards, but he did the honors when it came time to gingerly lower the LSTAT to the floor. (And I'm glad. I had visions of crashing into part of the museum's neuroanatomy collection. They have thousands of slices of animal brains mounted on glass slides: cat, raccoon, owl monkey, deer mouse, wombat, Bennett's wallaby, ringtail possum. . . . One false move with the forklift and I'd have been picking broad-nosed bandicoot brain out of my hair for days.) After we loaded the LSTAT into a quarter-ton truck, Leroy Nelson drove us back to Walter Reed. If my experience is any guide, a lot of putting on a museum exhibit is spent figuring out how to get things in doors and down hallways. There's a fair amount of carpentry involved, too. It's kind of like a big do-it-yourself home remodeling job. Steven Hill, the museum's exhibits manager, had designed something he called "big and kid-proof": three tall plexiglass sheets that would surround the LSTAT, with text and photos on the museum wall to explain what the thing does and show it in action. Plexiglass doesn't just install itself, you know, so we drilled holes, tapped them and screwed the plexi to the wall. We took the LSTAT out of its crate, muscled the crate into the display, then hoisted the olive drab LSTAT -- imagine a beefy stretcher with switches and readouts -- on top. I think I hung the pictures relatively straight, but it was late and I'd been working since 8:30 a.m. There's a lot to see at the museum -- priceless antique microscopes, the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln -- but I know where I'm taking the kids first when we visit. And they had better not leave any fingerprints."
Washington Post, February 20, 2007

"American addiction to tobacco and the money it generates is brought into sharp focus in Cartoonists Take Up Smoking. The 50 cartoonists featured in this exhibition lampoon company executives and advertisers, the lawyers who made millions through suits against tobacco companies, and governments that supplemented their incomes through cigarette taxes and legal settlements. All these cartoons were published in the 40 years since a landmark Surgeon General's report definitively connected smoking with lung cancer. The release officially heralded the USA's effort to kick the tobacco habit, a campaign that continues today. In their desperation to attract customers, tobacco companies targeted women, minorities, and even children. Some of the original advertisements are displayed alongside cartoonists' take on them. Physicians are not spared: many doctors smoked well into the 1950s and were even used in advertising. A 1946 advert trumpeted “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarettes.” Although heavy handed at times, the exhibition powerfully illustrates the devil's bargain the US struck with the deadly weed and how difficult it has been to break the deal despite the devastating toll on public health. The National Museum of Health and Medicine, Washington DC, USA, until March 31, 2007."
The Lancet, February 17, 2007

"In 1934 Elizabeth Ramsey, a recent Yale graduate, was performing an autopsy on a young woman at New Haven Hospital when she discovered a tiny blob that would help define her career. The blob, an apparently healthy 14-day-old human embryo was arguably the youngest discovered to date. Ramsey donated it to the Carnegie Institution of Washington Department of Embryology in Baltimore. Carnegie number 6734 became a fixture in the department's extensive collection of human embryos that would inevitably be used to develop the now standard "Carnegie Stages," the 23 developmental stages of embryonic growth based largely on the appearance of differentiated structures rather than on size or age. Ramsey later moved to Washington, DC, and started commuting regularly to Carnegie to study with some of the leading embryologists at the time: George W. Corner, Carl Hartman, Chester Heuser, and George Streeter among others. After World War II, Ramsey joined the Carnegie as a staff member, continuing her work on endometrial vasculature, implantation, and placental development. She became curator of the embryo collection and made important contributions to the study of uteroplacental blood flow and gas exchange. Adrianne Noe is director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology which houses the Carnegie collection. She says that Ramsey's donation was significant because it brought attention to the collection efforts at the time and represents, "an important point along the line of descriptions of the growth and development of the human." Ramsey, on the other hand, apparently joked that the Yale embryo ensured her admission to Carnegie."
The Scientist, February 2007

"Cartoonists Take Up Smoking" has been extended to March 31 at the National Museum of Health and Medicine at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The exhibit retraces the four-decade battle over the use and promotion of cigarettes since the landmark Surgeon General's 1964 report on smoking and health. It also addresses the complacency of organized medicine, politicians, and the media in ending the tobacco pandemic. Curating the show is Dr. Alan Blum, founder and director of the University of Alabama Center for the Study of Tobacco and Society. The exhibit was launched at the 2004 Association of American Editorial Cartoonists convention in Lexington, Ky. It later moved to Seattle; Tuscaloosa, Ala.; and Birmingham, Ala."
Editor & Publisher, January 18, 2007

2007 - Visitors

"We were very impressed! Glad we were able to enjoy and learn new things."
- a visitor, October 2007

"My last visit was in 1967--I've remembered it with fascination ever since. Thank you for the opportunity. This place should be swarming with tourists and patients, alike."
- a visitor, October 2007

"A special place, everyone is so helpful."
- a visitor, October 2007

"Amazing, never seen anything like this before. Definite must see for anyone visiting DC."
- a visitor, October 2007

"I think that the museum is an excellent teaching tool for children in elementary school, 4th grade to adult."
- a visitor, October 2007

“Excellent reality museum.”
- a visitor, September 2007

"Kinda gross. Kinda cool. It got me out of school."
- a visitor, September 2007

"We've been in the Mutter Museum is Philadelphia many times, but your collection and presence is much more interesting."
- a visitor, September 2007

“Very amazing and unbelievable.”
- a visitor, September 2007

"Surprised by the number and variety of microscopes. The movie of the evolution of war medicine was great. So well done. Wish there was more."
- a visitor, September 2007

"It is a fantastic display of historically relevant developments in medicine--we were thoroughly impressed."
- a visitor, August 2007

"I enjoyed reading about the different exhibits. I was saddened to see life's hardships. I feel many people should know the struggles of people."
- a visitor, August 2007

"From a former infection central nurse, great 'history.'"
- a visitor, August 2007

"Great place to visit especially if you are in the medical field."
- a visitor, August 2007

"Very interesting artifacts for a future doctor."
- a visitor, August 2007

"Fantastic jewel of a museum."
- a visitor, July 2007

"Brilliant--I was fascinated and horrified!"
- a visitor, July 2007

"This museum reached the depths of our imagination."
- a visitor, July 2007

"Very informative and interesting. It was disturbing to see the damage we do to ourselves with the things we have created for that purpose."
- a visitor, July 2007

"This museum was wild! I'm coming again."
- a visitor, June 2007

"Thanks for the genetics addition; it is a great resource for our genetics unit in high school biology. My students enjoyed the interactive exhibits. We came to see the microscope display, but received a lot more!"
- a visitor, June 2007

"Great! Our 5-year-old now wants to go to med school!"
- a visitor, June 2007

"This was the most interesting museum we've visited in D.C. The displays are amazing and really make you appreciate medicine. Awesome!"
- a visitor, June 2007

"My 11-year-old son no longer has questions about how babies are born and what they look like inside. This is an experience he will never forget."
- a visitor, June 2007

"Thank you for reminding me of how wonderful we are made. The human body is like a world all to itself."
- a visitor, June 2007

"The Gregor Mendel exhibit is excellent. The amputation displays are still relevant."
- a visitor, May 2007

"Progression of myocardial infarction was interesting, as well as the placement of the stint. Wonderful museum!"
- a visitor, May 2007

"This is something that no one will ever forget. Especially the elephantiasis leg. Cool & gross!"
- a visitor, May 2007

"I believe this was my 8th visit. Fascinating as usual."
- a visitor, May 2007

"Best kept secret in DC. Loved it! Will definitely come back again."
- a visitor, May 2007

"I enjoyed the Civil War details--they complement my tour of Kentucky Civil War sites, but the absolutely best part were the stories from victims and patients who expressed their thoughts and experiences, from the scar drawings to the red cross epidemic fever journal--well done."
- a visitor, April 2007

"A hidden D.C. treasure. Thanks for an informative display. I especially enjoyed the Civil War display."
- a visitor, April 2007

"As informative as it is a historical treasure. Thanks to the military and its brave doctors for advancing the art of medicine."
- a visitor, April 2007

"Thank you! As an RN and aspiring medical student this was enlightening and enjoyable."
- a visitor, April 2007

"The displays were awesome and gruesome! It was very intriguing and informational."
- a visitor, April 2007

"We have been visiting since the late '60s and appreciate this great museum."
- a visitor, March 2007

"I really enjoyed this museum -- it furthered my appreciation for doctors and medicine and I wish more people could see what I saw today. Thank you very much, well done."
- a visitor, March 2007

"Magnificent! I enjoyed spending two hours in this one floor museum than the Smithsonian. Great displays!"
- a visitor, March 2007

“I think that it was quite interesting to say the least. Although dark and grotesque, it's amazing what a person can learn here.”
- a visitor, March 2007

“This was a great display of art and medicine together. Thanks!”
- a visitor, March 2007

"This is totally disgusting...I absolutely love it!"
-- a visitor, February 2007

"This museum is great...history, science and art. I was impressed with the new exhibits. Thanks."
-- a visitor, February 2007

"Though my stomach cannot take it, the significance of this museum is understood. It was great."
-- a visitor, February 2007

"Fascinating exhibits."
-- a visitor, February 2007

"Quite an interesting experience. I learned a lot about the advances of medicine over the years."
-- a visitor, February 2007

"Still my favorite place to visit."
-- a visitor, January 2007

"Very instructive and opens many windows."
-- a visitor, January 2007

"Fascinating and educational. Thanks much!"
-- a visitor, January 2007

"Great museum -- we enjoyed it very much!"
-- a visitor, January 2007

"Extremely interesting to see the progress of treatment of war injuries. I was a student cadet nurse in WWII."
-- a visitor, January 2007

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