-----Original Message-----
From: Hawk, Alan J. [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 30 June 2000 15:06
Apologies for cross-posting
National Museum of Health and Medicine Unveils Exhibit on Wartime Medicine
in Korea on 50th Anniversary of Conflict
Washington, DC, June 23, 2000 - Blood, Sweat and Saline: Combat Medicine
in the Korean Conflict an exhibit revealing the challenges and
accomplishments of the military medical teams who served during the conflict
(1950-1953), opens June 26, 2000 at the National Museum of Health and
Medicine, exactly 50 years after the start of the Korean conflict.
The story of medicine during the Korean conflict comes to life through
photographs and images and the personal recollections of medics, patients
and military personnel. The realities of performing medicine in mobile
hospitals are represented by the weapons, equipment, supplies, medications
and medical instruments of the time. The tools of a Mobile Army Surgical
Hospital (MASH) surgeon and real artifacts of human tissue and organs
illustrate the toll that climate, injuries and diseases took on the human
body.
Despite war-weariness just five years after the close of World War II,
the United States felt compelled to react when North Korean troops, with aid
from the Soviet Union, invaded South Korea in June of 1950. In addition to a
lack of preparedness, the United States faced unique challenges in Korea,
such as extreme weather, varied terrain, and exotic diseases. Through
research and innovation, the medical teams succeeded in getting the soldiers
to care faster and more efficiently, and making the treatments more
accessible and effective. Due to research in the field and back in the
United States, the medical teams managed to update and improve old models,
and institute new paradigms. The advancements in treatment in Korea
outlasted the war itself by bolstering past findings and triggering
additional research.
This modest exhibit utilizes the unique collections of the Museum, and
includes images of soldiers afflicted with Epidemic Hemorrhagic Fever, and
models of a foot afflicted with fourth-degree frostbite and a heart pierced
by shrapnel. The exhibit will be on display through July 2001.
The National Museum of Health and Medicine, founded as the Army Medical
Museum in 1862 to study and improve medical conditions during the American
Civil War, is a division of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Open
daily except Christmas from 10:00 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., the Museum is located
at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Avenue and Elder Street,
NW, Washington, D.C. Public telephone number is 202-782-2200. Admission is
free.
