"We have done our best...to make the museum and library such as a great profession and a great nation have a right to demand."
Dr. John S. Billings, address to the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons, 1888
In the 19th century, the medical profession in the United States set out to define itself in the new nation.
Without any formal licensing laws that dictated who could practice medicine, the United States medical field became extremely saturated.
Competing with homeopaths, midwives, and other nonorthodox practitioners, the university-educated medical elites sought to separate themselves from the rest. One of the ways they did this was establishing medical museums.
Army Medical Library, 1898. National Library of Medicine.
This project will explore the ways that orthodox American medical physicians sought to set themselves apart as the medical elite by using spectacles in medical museums to establish social authority. Each section of this project represents one element that helped 19th-century physicians solidify their roles at the top of the American medical food chain.
The most public-facing role of medical spectacles was the promotion of public health. By educating the population on their health and wellness, both physical and moral, orthodox medical professionals sought to establish authority over the health of the nation.
Medical museums were part of the medical profession’s larger goal of elevating university-trained medicine above its nonorthodox competitors. They did this through conspicuous displays of advanced medical knowledge, such as displays of complex medical cases and high-profile autopsies.
The Civil War had proved to the United States government the dangers of political dissent. Especially in the state-run Army Medical Museum in Washington DC, the bodies of war criminals and assassins reminded potential dissenters about the power the United States government held over them.
Prominent medical scholars' interest in the study of race led them to collect thousands of "specimens" in the form of stolen human remains. These collections were often in medical museums, further othering and dehumanizing Indigenous Americans, whose bodies were subjugated by the United States government in both life and death.
While less widespread than in the 19th century, medical museums and spectacles still exist to this day. More recently, medical museums have begun to reckon with their unethical, and sometimes violent, pasts.
Further Learning
If you want to learn more, this page provides a list of books, podcasts, and YouTube channels that expand on the themes explored in this project.