amarneh_

HISTORY of the DIVISION of MEDICAL SCIENCES

_In The Museum of History and Technology_

_This paper traces, for the first time, the history of the
Division of Medical Sciences in the Museum of History and
Technology from its small beginnings as a section of materia
medica in 1881 to its present broad scope. The original
collection of a few hundred specimens of crude drugs which had
been exhibited at the centennial exhibition of 1876 at
Philadelphia, has now developed into the largest collection in
the Western Hemisphere of historical objects related to the
healing arts._

THE AUTHOR: _Sami Hamarneh is the curator of the Division of
Medical Sciences in the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of
History and Technology._

By the early 1870's, leading figures from both the health professions
and the general public had begun to realize the necessity for having the
medical sciences represented in the Smithsonian Institution. The impetus
behind this new feeling resulted from the action of a distinguished
American physician, philanthropist, and author, Joseph Meredith Toner
(1825-1896), and came almost a decade before the integration of a new
section concerned with research and the historical and educational
aspects of the healing arts in the Smithsonian Institution.

In 1872, Dr. Toner established the "Toner Lectures" to encourage efforts
towards discovering new truths "for the advancement of medical science
... for the benefit of mankind." To finance these lectures, he provided
a fund worth approximately $3,000 to be administered by a board of
trustees consisting of the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the
Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy, the Surgeon General of the U.S. Army
(only in some years), and the president of the Medical Society of the
District of Columbia. The interest from this fund was to compensate
physicians and scholars who were to deliver "at least two annual memoirs
or essays" based on original research on some branch of the medical
sciences and containing information which had been verified "by
experiments or observations."[1]

The Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution agreed to have these
lectures published by the Institution in its Miscellaneous Collections.
The first lecture given by the Assistant Surgeon of the U.S. Army, "On
the Structure of Cancerous Tumors and the Mode in which Adjacent parts
are Invaded," deserves cre