After more than 30 years at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in the District of Columbia, the National Museum of Health and Medicine has completed its relocation to its new home at the Fort Detrick -- Forest Glen Annex in Silver Spring, Md.

Museums play a unique and important role for any community, and the National Museum of Health and Medicine is no different for its new home in Silver Spring, Md. As a military medical museum, the message is that medicine is important to the military and military medicine is important to the nation.

Exhibits and programs will convey this message to visitors. Initial exhibits feature artifacts and specimens related to Civil War medicine and human anatomy/pathology. The exhibit "To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds" offers an in-depth view of military medicine at the time of the Civil War, and features the amputated leg of Union Maj. General Daniel E. Sickles.

Other exhibits include "Visibly Human: Health and Disease in the Human Body" which features natural human specimens as well as plastinated artifacts, displaying normal and abnormal body functions. "Visibly Human" includes specimens such as a leg affected by a parasitic infection known as elephantiasis, a human trichobezoar, and more'including some of the "most requested" items from the collections.

Additionally, as a National Historic Landmark collection, the Museum will inspire interest and understanding in the past, present and the future of medicine, especially military medicine. Doors to the museum which is located at to 2500 Linden Lane, Silver Spring, Md. are open daily from 10:00a.m to 5:30 p.m. and admission is free.