Medical Museums, U.S.A.
July 25, 2008 by Liz Lewis
Filed under Exposed!, Extreme, Historic Health, Medical History, Misc., Oddities
From stomach sized hairballs to a giant hamster wheel for energetic patients, medical museums offer a chance to explore medicines colorful history and discover the bizarre, the offbeat, and the extreme treatments of days gone by.
So if you’re on the road this summer and don’t mind a little ’shock and gore’, stop by a medical museum or two. You’ll be amazed (and relieved) by how far the practice of medicine has come.
Here’s four medical museums definitely worth visiting:
The Mutter Museum in Philadelphia was orginally established as a place for trainee doctors to go and learn about anatomy and human anomalies. It’s those anomalies – such as the preserved body of the ‘Soap Lady’ and a cancerous growth removed from President Grover Cleveland – that now draw the public to it’s doors.
The Glore Psychiatric Museum is housed in former ‘State Lunatic Asylum No. 2′ building in St Joseph, Missouri,. From medical artifacts such as a tranquilizing chair and a dousing tank to exhibits featuring the ‘1,446 Objects Swallowed by a Patient’ and the ‘television diary’, this museum will leave you speechlss, spellbound, and mighty relieved that the days of such barbaric medical treatment is well and truly over.
The International Museum of Surgical Science in Chicago offers a diverse collection of surgical memoriabilia and artefacts from the around the world. Spread out over four floors, the exhibits include early 20th century X-Ray machines, trephining (skull drilling) instruments and an iron lung. The museum’s newest exhibit, Beyond Broken Bones, looks at the history (from the ancient Egyptians to modern day) of orthopedics and prothestics.
The National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington D.C. is a goldmine for American history buffs. Here you can see not only the bullet that killed Abraham Lincoln but also the probe used to locate the bullet and the blood stained shirt cuff of the surgeon who attended Lincoln’s autopsy. Other permanent displayss include ‘Medicine During the Civil War’ and ‘Battlefield Surgery 101.’
Know of any Medical Museums to add to the list ?
Here is a link to an interesting site managed by the U.S. Department of Interior. Although this is not technically a museum (it’s a National Historic Park) the knowledge and history presented could coincide nicely on a list of “Health” and “historic” places to visit.
http://http//www.nps.gov/kala/