The Museum of Military Medicine is the Army-endorsed and supported focus for the heritage and history of the Royal Army Medical Service (RAMS) and its antecedents, the Royal Army Medical Corps (RAMC), Royal Army Dental Corps (RADC), and the Queen Alexandra’s Royal Army Nursing Corps. It is also the Corps museum for the Royal Army Veterinary Corps (RAVC).
Established in 1952 at Church Crookham, the museum has been based at Keogh Barracks since the early 1960s when first the RAMC Training Depot and later the tri-service Defence Medical Services Training Centre was sited there. The museum was originally created to engender an ‘esprit de corps’ and foster a sense of regimental traditions amongst serving personnel, and to promote the contribution of the military to medicine and healthcare more broadly.
The museum displays are arranged chronologically and trace the history of military medicine from the civil wars of the 1640s until the present day and highlight the contribution the military has made to advances in medicine in both peacetime and conflict. In particular, the role of casualty evacuation, surgical intervention, and rehabilitation are featured, as well as wider contributions to healthcare and prevention, in both humans and animals. The displays also focus on the regimental side of Army life in the four AMS corps.
Every year temporary exhibitions are staged in the main gallery, and in recent years these have included the medical history of World War One, the centenary of the RADC, the role of the sanitary sections, as well as celebrations of the RAMC on its 125th Anniversary (in 2023) and the QARANC on its 75th anniversary (in 2024).
The museum also serves as a centre for research into the history of military and civil medicine. The museum archives onsite consist of more than 30,000 unique items, while further portions of the museum’s manuscripts are currently held by the Wellcome Library in London. The collection features the personal papers of a number of key individuals in the history of the corps, in addition to original papers relating to the regimental organisation of the Army Medical Services, as well as medical and clinical papers.
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