The Old Operating Theatre Museum
Blood, gore, amputation saws in one of London's best small museums
The old operating theatre in London's St Thomas's Hospital is now one of the city's most fascinating little museums
'Alongside the basin is a row of pegs from which hang the operating coats of the staff. These are mostly old frock coats, stiff and stinking with pus and blood.'
Built in 1821, the operating theatre at St Thomas's Hospital was state-of-the-art: large skylight, tiered seating for students, a false floor containing sawdust to soak up the blood, and the very latest in amputation saws. By the time it closed in 1862, anaesthesia had even been invented, though it was only later that the causes of infection were understood and surgeons washed their hands before the operation as well as afterwards.
When St Thomas's moved in 1862 the theatre stayed hidden and almost forgotten, up in the attic of St Thomas's church. Discovered again in 1956, it was renovated and re-opened, this time as one of London's most gruesomely fascinating museums: The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garrett.
Sputum cups and nipple shields, suppositories and stomach pumps. Examining a display on the treatment of gunshot wounds, I realise I'm alone in the gloomy room. My footsteps creak on the floorboards, and the rain batters on the skylight. I turn to the next display and see a collection of specimen jars containing a kidney, a heart, a bit of lung, a brain, a strangulated hernia.
Still, it wasn't all blood and pus in those days. In one case is a beer bell, used to signal the distribution of bread and beer on the wards - anything from 2-8 pints a day, water being unfit to drink. Herbal medicine was in common use, the herbs cultivated and sold in places like the Herb Garrett, which existed alongside the theatre. Rhubarb is 'a mild and gentle form of laxitive, it is said to have a truly cleansing action upon the gut, removing debris and then astringing with antiseptic properties as well.' Liquorice was introduced to England by Dominican monks at Pontefract, being well regarded by the Greeks and Romans for curing coughs and for its use as a laxitive. Nearby is yet another laxitive - marshmallow. Is there anything that isn't a laxitive? Oh yes, beetroot cures baldness!
A visit to the Operating Theatre was probably a fair old laxitive too. This was the women's theatre, with up to 150 male medical students looking on, 'packed like herrings in a barrel' according to one surgeon's account. If the pus didn't kill them, the trauma sometimes did: 'another female was brought in blind?folded and placed on to the table for the purpose of undergoing an operation for the removal of the leg below the knee.'
From time to time these operations are re-created at the Old Operating Theatre Museum. 'Mostly during school holidays,' the curator told me as I left. 'They're very popular.'
For further information visit the website by clicking here.
