Greetings, loyal MütterEDU readers. Editor Kevin here to introduce another article by Center for Education educator Amanda McCall. This time around, Amanda shares some information on other medical museums both in the United States and abroad.
My short tenure working at the Mütter Museum has given me an immense appreciation for how important anatomical and historical medical museums are to the past, present, and future of medicine and the allied sciences. The Mütter Museum is just one of many brilliant options to get a glimpse into the tangled journey medicine has taken to get to where it is currently. Obviously, actual travel is proving a little difficult right now, so I thought I would give you all a look at some of the anatomical and historical medical museums that are on my wish list for the hopeful future.
The Hunterian Museum (London, England)
was established in 1799 when the British government purchased surgeon John Hunter’s collection of specimens and gave it the Company of Surgeons (later the Royal College of Surgeons). Hunter was well known for his pathological specimen preparations. Full cadaver dissections were just starting to emerge as an important aspect of medical training, and prepared specimens remained a crucial part of any prospective surgeon's education. Hunter created his specimens to highlight the structure and function of the anatomical item, something that made the Huntarian unique compared to other anatomical collections.
One of the most recognizable members of the museum is Charles Byrne, also known as the “Irish Giant.” Byrne suffered from acromegaly, a rare condition in which an overproduction of growth hormone leads to above average stature. Due to this condition, Byrne stood 7’7” by the time he was an adult. He was a well-known fixture in the London social scene, and John Hunter was very up front about his desire to possess Byrne’s body after he died. Charles Byrne did not want his body to fall into the hand of anatomists, and he made his friends promise to bury his body at sea when he died. Unfortunately, when Byrne succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 22, Hunter bribed the undertaker responsible for Byrne’s remains and was able to obtain his body anyway. Byrne’s skeleton has been on display at the Huntarian for over 200 years despite his wishes.
Museum Vrolik (Amsterdam, The Netherlands)
was formed around the collection of a father-son pair of Dutch anatomy professors named Gerardus and Willem Vrolik. The City of Amsterdam bought their collection in 1869, and it eventually found a home at the Academic Medical Center around 1984. During his lifetime, Willem was fascinated by teratology, the study of congenital abnormalities or abnormal formations, and he wrote extensively on various related subjects throughout his life. Anatomical preparations that highlight different examples of teratology play a significant part in the current display, but other medical collections have been added throughout the years. Portions of the museum are dedicated to bone pathology and dental specimens as well. Much like the Mütter Museum, only a small percentage of Museum Vrolik’s collection is on display, so I can only dream about what lies behind the scenes.
Musée Fragonard (Paris, France)
is different from the "usual" anatomical museum. Unlike the other collections on this list, the Musée Fragonard is attached to the world’s oldest veterinary school in Paris, France, and most of the specimens in its collection cater to veterinary medicine. Much of the museum highlights many different animal dissections and oddities.
These preparations are definitely worth seeing, but we are here for the èchochés, or “flayed figures.” Honoré Fragonard was the school’s first professor of anatomy in the late 18th century, and he specialized in creating skinned anatomical preservations. The method behind these unique preparations was a closely guarded secret, and we still don’t quite know how he was able to achieve the remarkable results we see. Fragonard produced over 700 of these flayed figures, but only 22 remain in the museum today. These figures were dissected to highlight different structures and muscle movements, and they are posed in everyday ways to best show this.
Pauls Stradiņš History of Medicine Museum (Riga, Latvia)
opened in large part due to the efforts of Pauls Stradiņš, a well-regarded Latvian surgeon and oncologist. The collection has been around in one form or another since the 1930s when Dr. Stradiņš put anatomical illustrations down a hall in his hospital to dissuade medical students from leaving their cigarette butts there. The museum came into its current form in 1957, and it illustrates the development of medicine throughout history. The museum added a pharmaceutical museum with a functioning pharmacy and herbal tearoom in 1987.
One of the more gruesome exhibits in the museum is a commissioned two-headed dog created by Dr. Vladimir Demikhov. Demikhov experimented heavily with animal organ transplantation during the 1940s and 1950s, and, toward the end of his research, he attempted to graft the head of a dog onto a living canine. This creature lived for 38 days. The museum requested that Demikhov create another one of these animals to be featured in the museum, which he did. Personally, I’m not sure how I feel about this kind of experimentation, but Demikhov was responsible for a large amount of the research that goes into current transplantation surgeries.
La Specola Anatomical Collection (Florence, Italy)
could best be described as part anatomical museum, part art museum. It was founded by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold II in 1765 to educate the public on natural law and to help illustrate the needed separation between religion and science. The museum contains over 1400 anatomical wax models of varying sizes and subjects made by the most prominent wax artists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Wax models were extremely valuable teaching tools for medical professionals and the public alike before the age of photography and hands-on dissections.
The most noteworthy of these specimens is a style of anatomical model known as an “Anatomical Venus.” Anatomical Venus models were a way to educate the public on anatomy, but still have the inner workings of the body be beautiful and inspiring as well. The Venus are angelic, charming women sculped into relaxed positions with their internal anatomy and viscera exposed to view. The anatomy of the Venus was based directly on the cadavers that physicians were learning from at the time. They were incredibly accurate, but they are still sometimes regarded as more art than anatomical specimen.
International Museum of Surgical Science (Chicago, Illinois, USA)
(IMSS) is part of the International College of Surgeons, founded in 1935 to promote surgical knowledge worldwide. The museum resides in what used to be a private residence styled after a French chateau on the grounds of Versailles. During the early 1950s, members of ICS began collecting art, manuscripts, and surgical tools they believed should be preserved for the sake of medical advancement, and by 1954 they had officially taken over the museum space. Rather than containing examples of anatomical preparations, the IMSS focuses more on art and the varied tools surgeons have developed and used throughout the history of medicine.
One of the most striking features of the IMSS is the Hall of Immortals, a room of 12 marble sculptures depicting some of the greatest figures in medicine and the allied sciences. Some of the most notable inclusions are Hippocrates, Marie Curie, and Andreas Vesalius. Also featured in the museum are original X-Rays taken by Emil Grubbé, a physician involved with the introduction of radiation as a treatment for tumors, and a Lindbergh perfusion pump, created by Charles Lindbergh, the famous pilot, to keep organs oxygenated outside the body, which was an early precursor to the heart-lung machine.
I hope you’ve enjoyed a small glimpse into what a selection of historical medical and anatomical museums around the world have to offer. If any of them have caught your interest, I certainly hope you will have the opportunity to see them in person soon. All the museums on the list have something slightly different to offer, and that is definitely one of the best aspects of the study of medicine and its history: there's hopefully something for everyone.