ELT Field Trip Report: National Museum of Health and Medicine, Walter Reed
By: Lani Yap
On November 12th I attended an ELT field trip to the National Museum of Health and Medicine on the Walter Reed Army Medical Center campus with five other students and our two professors. We got a chance to wander around the museum for a couple hours looking at the many different exhibits. The museum was very informative and unique. The pictures and displays I saw there have definitely stuck with me.
I got a chance to see just about every exhibit in the museum, however there were several displays that I remember in particular. The first was in the exhibit “Evolution of the Microscope”. There I found Robert Hooke’s microscope, which was first to introduce the idea of coarse and fine adjustments. This microscope also had a stage and an illumination system to facilitate in the observation of tiny objects. It had a very intricate design in gold on the outside of its wooden body. The microscope also had a ball and socket joint as well as a joint at the base of its vertical pillar allowing for the slope of the body tube. It was displayed in a case amongst many other microscopes and was described with explanatory text. It fit into the bigger theme of the exhibit because it showed the development of the microscope. Through the introduction of different features the microscope has evolved to be an even more technologically advanced tool for scientists. This advance in the technology has led to great scientific discoveries.
The second display I wanted to mention was that about the assassination of President Lincoln. It was in the exhibit called “To Build up the Nation’s Wounds”. The display consisted of fragments of Lincoln’s skull, a lock of hair from the site of the womb, the bullet that killed the president, a cuff stained with his blood from the shirt of someone helping with his autopsy, casts of his face and hands, and the probe used to get the bullet out. The president died on April 14, 1865 when he was shot in the back of the head. It was very moving to see these remains of the president. While there was text to explain each object in the display, it was the objects themselves which told the story. This display linked to the theme of the exhibit in which it was located because it showed the preservation methods that have been used. There was medicine during the Civil War and in olden times, and these exhibits are on display so that people of today can appreciate the history of our country.
The third exhibit I encountered was that called “From a Single Cell”. There was one display in particular which caught my eye. It was that of the skeletal development of babies. This display had real skeletons of babies at 11, 12, 14, 15, and 17 weeks, and then 4 and 6 month olds. The skeletons were preserved in jar-like containers and were accompanied by verbal descriptions of at what stage of development each fetus had been preserved. The point of this display was to show how skeletal structures form including the spinal column, skull, arms, and legs. The display showed how the bones start to develop and lengthen over time. The display tied into the theme of the exhibit by showing the start of life and how a baby develops from a single zygote cell.
While all of these exhibits had different displays to offer, the last one entitled, “Human Body, Human Being”, was certainly the most incredible one. There, examples of different parts of the body were preserved and described in text and diagrams. In my opinion, the human remains I saw on display were very appropriately configured. Many of the remains were suspended in preservatives and in cases accompanied by explanations for why they looked the way they did. There were detailed explanations of how the different organs work. For example, the human liver display showed several different livers. Each one looked different because of some disease or condition. There was one from a human who had died from alcoholic cirrhosis. Right next to it was an explanation of how this could have been prevented and the fact that this condition is one of the top ten leading causes of death in the United States. There were also livers of people who had syphilitic cirrhosis, an enlarged liver, and other diseases.
For the stomach there was information about cancer of the stomach and ulcers. The kidney section showed a dehydrated kidney and some kidney stones. In the heart section there was an enlarged heart caused by the hard work necessary for someone who has high blood pressure. There was another heart on display that was from someone after they had suffered a heart attack. The lung section showed the lungs of a smoker who had lung cancer, infected lungs, and a coal miner’s lungs. There was also a box showing the size of a breath of air and saying how many breaths an average person takes daily.
This whole exhibit was very well done. The organs were displayed in a way that they could serve the purpose of informing people about how the decisions they make can affect the health of their organs to a certain extent. The target audiences of people visiting the museum are most likely adults who want to know more about the human body and staying healthy. This exhibit is successful in its goal to educate, inform, and touch the people who come through to visit. I know that I, for one, will certainly never forget what I saw at the museum. It probably will affect my decisions because I don’t want to have organs looking like some of those which were on display at the museum. The museum’s displays related to the science classes I am currently taking. It was just nice to see displays in person instead of just verbal descriptions and pictures from textbooks. It’s always more effective to see the real thing. I’m glad that I chose this fieldtrip because as a premed major, I was very fascinated by the different displays the National Museum of Health and Medicine had to offer.