National Museum of Health and Medicine

Located in the Walter Reed Army Medical center, the NMHM is one of the older museums in the city (opened in 1862) and one of the few partially operated by the military. That’s because the focus of the museum’s eclectic collection is military medicine – the displays on Civil War combat ‘nursing’ are gruesome and fascinating in equal measure. This is hands-on stuff (well, not literally) and not for the faint hearted – visitors will see the effects of diseases, the tools used to battle them and all the messy side and after effects. Probably the most popular exhibit remains the paraphernalia connected to Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, including the bullet that killed him and bits of bone and hair from Lincoln’s skull.