The Museum of Military Medicine is the Army-designated and supported focus for the heritage and history of the four Sovereign corps of the Army Medical Services (AMS). It holds in trust artefact collections and archives relating to the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), Royal Army Veterinary Corps (RAVC), Royal Army Dental Corps (RADC), and the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps (QARANC), along with their respective antecedents. The collections are maintained by the Museum of Military Medicine Trust, a Charitable Incorporated Organisation, registered charity no. 1171026, originally constituted in May 1999 when the four individual Corps museums that existed until that date were brought together under one governance structure.

The earliest antecedent collection is that of the RAMC Historical Museum, established in 1952, while the RADC Museum came into being a few years later, in 1957. It had long been an ambition of the RADC Depot and Training Establishment on Connaught Road, Aldershot, to have its own museum, to display items of professional and regimental interest to visitors and courses―both officers and other ranks―who attended the Depot. A meeting of interested officers was held to discuss the creation of a museum, and the organisation of a collection followed. Although not on “a grandiose scale,” in 1960 it was reported that the museum was “sufficient to arouse interest to visitors. The display cases house some very interesting specimens contributed by past and present members of the A.D. Corps and the R.A.D.C. and some members of the dental profession.”

From the outset, each AMS Corps museum was intended to inculcate a sense of regimental traditions and to engender an ‘esprit de Corps’ to new recruits, which gave each museum their distinctive savour. As hinted in the quotation above, acquisition and collections development relied upon the gifts of individual serving and retired personnel that reflected their service, a situation that is still true today.

The museum displays feature numerous items drawn from the RADC collections that include dental instruments and kit, as well as more personal items. For example, while a prisoner at Milag, near Bremen, Captain Julius Green (1912-1990) wrote to his tailor in Glasgow to order a new uniform, which, remarkably, arrived two months later. His German captors were impressed! Similarly, Captain David Arkush treated the dental issues affecting fellow POWs during this imprisonment in the Far East, and had to contend with poor supplies and equipment. Arkush often had to improvise new tools crafted from bamboo, and even had his own dental chair constructed by one of his patients out of bamboo and rope. A number of these relics are on display at the museum.

The museum also features a series of dioramas to help illustrate certain themes in dental history. One features a Civil War-era musketeer. Before 1860, when breach-loading rifles and metal cartridges were introduced, it was essential that soldiers had good dentition to bite open powder cartridges while still holding their firearm. At this time, dental care mainly amounted to tooth extraction, sometimes using blacksmith’s tools, without sanitation or anaesthetics. In the 1850s sugar consumption soared, and with them rates of tooth decay. In the Boer War there were 7,000 admissions to hospital with dental problems.

The museum continues to collect material relating to the history of the RADC and welcomes donations from Corps members, past and present. Please contact the museum for information on how to donate items.

The museum, in Keogh Barracks, Ash Vale, Aldershot, is open Monday to Friday, 9.30 a.m. to 3.30 p.m. and is free to enter.