MUSEUMS AND THE POWER OF THE STATE
"American-like, we will conquer every opposing difficulty, every obstacle, until we reach the acme of scientific attainment."
Dr. H.P. Ayres, Medical and Surgical Reporter, 1869
Early American medical museums used their exhibitions as a demonstration of American political and military prowess.
Especially in the years following the Civil War, the American government wanted to quash dissent among its people and solidify its authority. Similar to the way a hunter may take a trophy from his kill, American medical museums used their acquisitions as a physical representation of the state’s dominance over its enemies.
​
Multiple presidential assassins and war criminals’ remains would find their way to the Army Medical Museum, typically under the guise of medical education on traumatic injuries.
​
Following the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln on April 15, 1865, the Trenton State Gazette in New Jersey wrote
"the vertebral neckbones of the assassin John Wilkes Booth, which were broken by the pistol bullet which caused his death, are now on exhibition among other surgical curiosities of the war."
Especially considering the Army Medical Museum was still primarily dedicated to the Civil War at this time, and considering that this institution was in Washington DC, the acquisition of John Wilkes Booth's remains represents the Union Army’s victory over the Confederacy.
Guiteau was a political extremist who believed the only way to fix the United States was to kill President James Garfield. Center for the History of Medicine at Countway Library, Harvard University.
Fifteen years later on July 2, 1881, Charles Julius Guiteau shot President James A. Garfield twice from behind. The 20th President died from his injuries eleven weeks later.
​
Guiteau had a long history of mental and physical illnesses, including multiple sexually transmitted infections from his numerous visits to sex workers. Some psychiatrists have speculated that neurosyphilis, an advanced stage of syphilis that causes severe brain damage, as well as a slew of other mental illnesses, started Guiteau down the path that led him to kill the president.
​
According to multiple newspaper reports, the Army Medical Museum acquired Guiteau’s remains after his execution and were preparing to display them.
While museum officials denied having anything to do with the remains, the warden of Guiteau’s prison reportedly told journalists:
"If the body is not in the medical museum today, it will be there in a day or two."
Grand Forks Daily Herald, 1882
Guiteau's history of physical and mental illness combined with his notoriety would make his remains a hot ticket item for the institution. Not only would acquiring and displaying Guiteau’s remains demonstrate what could happen to political dissidents, but Guiteau’s remains would also reinforce the link between morality and the body. To doctors at the time, social deviance began an inevitable slippery slope to murder.
​
Guiteau's brain remains an object of study to this day in its current home at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia.