Mobile Medical Museum

11/25/2025

Congratulations to our artist-in-residence Miriam Calleja Shaw, whose collage poem, Only Sell Your Everything, was recently published in the online journal Mouthful of Salt. This is one of the works that she created for Blindspot, on view at the Museum through January 2. Check it out!

By: Miriam Calleja November 2025 Miriam Calleja is a Maltese poet, artist, translator, writer, and workshop leader. Her latest chapbook is Come Closer, I Don’t Mind the Silence (BottleCap Press, 20…

11/24/2025

"Designers [of medical devices] have never personally experienced what it feels like to have those tools used inside their bodies. As a result, the real discomfort, pain, and even trauma that many patients endure during these exams have often been overlooked or dismissed.”

Researchers from Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands, have designed a new speculum to benefit patients, health professionals, and the environment. Health care providers use speculums to look inside the va**na and see the cervix to check for abnormal growths, take samples,...

11/21/2025

📢We are now accepting nominations for the 2026 Mobile Community Health Leadership Awards, which will be presented on Saturday, May 16. Scan the QR code or visit our website to review the guidelines and submit an online nomination form!

11/18/2025

Here is Dr. Goode seated onstage during Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s 1959 Emancipation Day address at the International Longshoreman's Union Hall in Mobile, Alabama. The event drew an overflow crowd of over 2,000 people. Dr. Goode was a leader in civil rights campaigns for decades, organizing for voting rights, desegregation of busses, hospitals, and schools, and more housing opportunities for African Americans. Photo from Alabama Citizen, January 17, 1959.

11/17/2025

PSA: we allow a wide range of views to be published in public comments on this page. We do not tolerate:

1. Use of hate speech or offensive language toward any group;
2. Violent threats;
3. Bullying and harassment;
4. Intentional misgendering or deadnaming;
5. Spamming;
6. Spreading of factually inaccurate misinformation and disinformation.

Anyone violating these page moderation rules will be blocked and may be reported.

11/15/2025

We're at Colonial Fort Conde for Living History Festival until noon. Come visit our table!

11/14/2025

In honor of Transgender Awareness Week (November 13-19), we are highlighting Marsha P. Johnson (1945-1992), an American LGBTQ activist and drag performer. Born in New Jersey, she moved to New York City at age 18. She began wearing women's clothing full-time in 1969 and later underwent feminizing hormone therapy. Johnson participated in the Stonewall riots of 1969, which were in response to police raids and arrests of gay patrons at Stonewall Inn. She was also active in such organizations as the Gay Liberation Front and the Street Transvestites for Gay Power. With Sylvia Rivera, Johnson co-founded Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR). This organization offered housing, clothing and food to transgendered youth in the early seventies. Johnson struggled with mental illness and financial insecurity throughout her life and often had to resort to s*x work and panhandling in order to survive. She was also the victim of many physical and s*xual assaults. In July 1992, after participating in the New York City Pride March, her body was found in the Hudson River. Since her death, there have been many public monuments and cultural tributes in her honor. New York City's East River State Park was renamed the Marsha P. Johnson State Park in 2020.

11/13/2025

We're hiring an Archival Collection Conservation Intern for Spring and Summer 2026! Scan QR code or visit our website for position description.

11/12/2025

In the new Frankenstein movie, directed by Guillermo del Toro, Victor Frankenstein has the idea to circulate galvanic energy through the lymphatic system and reanimate a dead human being, the "Monster." In the 18th century, scientists such as William Hunter, William Cruikshank, and William Hewson were studying the lymphatic system closely and injecting mercury into animal cadavers to learn about lymphatic circulation. One major debate among scientists was whether life-sustaining humors were absorbed by body tissues through the walls of lymphatic vessels or the veins (the existence of capillaries was still unknown). So Victor's idea does make sense in the historical setting of the story. Visit the museum to see this model of the lymphatic system, purchased in Paris by Dr. Josiah Nott for the museum at the Medical College of Alabama in the 1850s.

11/11/2025

The assassination of President Garfield is drawing attention again, thanks to the new Netflix miniseries, "Death by Lightning." Read about Dr. Charles Purvis, an African-American physician who rushed to his aid when Garfield was shot.

Dr. Charles B. Purvis (1842-1869) was one of the first African-American surgeons in the United States and the first African-American hospital administrator under civilian authority. During and immediately after the Civil War, he served in the U.S. Army as an Assistant Surgeon. He was one of the co-founders of the College of Medicine at Howard University, the first medical school in the United States to admit African-American students. Dr. Purvis taught at Howard from 1868 to 1907. After being denied membership in the Washington, D.C. chapter of the American Medical Association in 1869, he was one of twelve African-American physicians to found the National Medical Association, which is still in existence today. Despite his exclusion from the AMA, Dr. Purvis earned the respect of U.S. Presidents and other high-ranking officials. When President Garfield was shot by an assassin at a train station in 1881, Dr. Purvis was one of the physicians who first came to his aid, and was later given an honorable mention for his efforts to save the critically wounded President. That same year, he was appointed Surgeon-in-Charge at Freedman's Hospital by Garfield's successor, President Chester Arthur. Dr. Purvis served in this post until 1894. In 1889, Dr. Purvis wrote to his friend, Frederick Douglass, "The spirit of slavery still exists, it must be broken, there are great battles yet to be fought."

11/07/2025

In 1962, Dr. Escous B. Goode became the first African American candidate for Mobile County School Board. This was an important post because under Alabama's Pupil Placement Law of 1955, local school boards were authorized to oversee student placement. In the eight years since the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board of Education, no public school in Alabama had been integrated. Dr. Goode and his wife Effie received anonymous death threats at home, but he carried on with his campaign, making it to a runoff before losing to the white incumbent.

11/05/2025

Three pathology samples of the human pituitary gland, a gland at the base of the brain that is part of the endocrine system. The first sample is a normal gland. The deep red parts are the acidophil (eosinophil) cells, the blue parts are the basophil cells, and the light pink parts are the chromophobe cells. The second sample shows an acidophil adenoma, a noncancerous tumor. The overgrowth and malformation of acidophil cells can cause acromegaly, a condition in which some bones and tissues grow excessively. The third sample shows a chromophobe adenoma, the most common type of pituitary tumor, which can cause pituitary insufficiency and interfere with normal skeletal and s*xual development. Images from A Text-Book of Pathology: An Introduction to Medicine, by William Boyd, M.D., LL.D., M.R.C.P.,Ed., F.R.C.P., Lond. Dipl., Psych., F.R.S.C. 3rd ed. (Lea & Febiger: Philadelphia), 1938.