LONDON A-Z An alphabetical journey through the capital's museums Old Operating Theatre
Location: 9a St Thomas's St, SE1 9RY [map] Open: 10:30am - 5pm Admission: £5.60 Brief summary: Victorian amputation garret Website:www.thegarret.org.uk Time to set aside: up to an hour
St Thomas's Hospital hasn't always been on the banks of the Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament. It arrived there 150 years ago from the area just south of London Bridge, selling up to make way for a new mainline rail terminus. The hospital's existing facilities were either transferred or demolished, except for one section that was entirely overlooked. High in the roofspace above a neighbouring church, two rooms were locked and abandoned and forgotten. One was an apothecary's garret, and the other was the female wing's operating theatre. A century later they were both rediscovered, and later lovingly restored, and now 21st century Londoners can take a look back into squeamish medical history.
You're looking for a church tower near the top of Borough High Street, SE1. Entrance is via the front porch up a surprisingly twirly spiral staircase. You'll emerge in the museum'sshop above the porch (small, but intriguingly stocked), then progress into the exhibition space proper. Don't be expecting something huge - this is a church roof after all - but there's plenty of old medical stuff stuffed inside.
Room one is dark and atticky, and used to be where the apothecary stirred up salves and lotions. This is the Herb Garret, more than 300 years old, and it's laid out with exhibition cases intermingled with bowls of crushedplantlife. You can tell you're somewhere clinical by the green glass bottles, and the leech is a dead giveaway that this is old school medicine. Where else in London is there a "history of the syringe", or indeed the explanation that suppositories used to be made from cocoa butter to help them melt away more easily? A variety of stuffed animals (and animal bits) are on show to educate visitors about some of the more unusual cures, although herbal solutions were far more common. Our ancestors were far more plantly-wise than the current pill-popping generation, and would think nothing of taking elderflower or willowbark in the absence of tamiflu or aspirin.
An adjoining corridor contains a selection of 19th century surgicalinstruments. This being adjacent to a ladies' ward there's a varied collection of forceps (ulp), and also some intimate tools that'll make your eyes water. Lithotomy (the removal of bladder stones) was one of the more common operations performed here, without incision, so there was only one way those pebbly interlopers were being squeezed out. Don't even think about it, move on.
The remaining room is the old operating theatre itself. More an amphitheatre really, with horseshoe terraces surrounding the central space beneath the skylight. A lot of medical students used to attend to observe the operations, this being a teaching hospital, and the (mostly destitute) patients had no cause to complain because they were getting their treatment for free. Don't expect gleaming surfaces, the room had a wooden floor because nobody at the time knew any better. Professional surgeons might have worn a special jacket to keep the blood off, but hygiene was still several years from attaining importance. If the patient died they died, and at least someone had had a go at trying to save them.
Attend at two o'clock on a Saturday afternoon and there's an added treat - a surgical demonstration on the Old Operating Theatre's old operating table. It's an amputation, of course, this being another unpleasantly common mid 19th-century operation. Any compound fracture back then inevitably led to infection, gangrene and death, so chopping off the afflicted limb gave the accident-prone patient the best chance of success. Stick your hand up when asked and you too could volunteer to lie back and lose a bit of yourself. The best doctors at the time could whip your leg off in less than 30 seconds (see this saw, it is very sharp isn't it, imagine that cutting through you six times, that's all it took). There'd be students holding you down in lieu of anaesthetic, and a gag in your mouth to ensure you didn't disturb any church services down below. No such agonies today (and smile, today's volunteers also get a commemorative badge for their services).
You'll leave the museum with some of idea of why life expectancy has increased over the years, and with renewed respect for generations of medical and nursing staff. Our much-loved NHS may have its roots in philanthropic hospitals like St Thomas's, but that doesn't mean you'd ever want to have been operated on here. So try not to stumble on the spiral staircase back down to the street, because there's a lady upstairs with an amputation kit and she knows how to use it. by tube: London Bridge
St Thomas's Hospital hasn't always been on the banks of the Thames opposite the Houses of Parliament. It arrived there 150 years ago from the area just south of London Bridge, selling up to make way for a new mainline rail terminus. The hospital's existing facilities were either transferred or demolished, except for one section that was entirely overlooked. High in the roofspace above a neighbouring church, two rooms were locked and abandoned and forgotten. One was an apothecary's garret, and the other was the female wing's operating theatre. A century later they were both rediscovered, and later lovingly restored, and now 21st century Londoners can take a look back into squeamish medical history.
Room one is dark and atticky, and used to be where the apothecary stirred up salves and lotions. This is the Herb Garret, more than 300 years old, and it's laid out with exhibition cases intermingled with bowls of crushed plantlife. You can tell you're somewhere clinical by the green glass bottles, and the leech is a dead giveaway that this is old school medicine. Where else in London is there a "history of the syringe", or indeed the explanation that suppositories used to be made from cocoa butter to help them melt away more easily? A variety of stuffed animals (and animal bits) are on show to educate visitors about some of the more unusual cures, although herbal solutions were far more common. Our ancestors were far more plantly-wise than the current pill-popping generation, and would think nothing of taking elderflower or willowbark in the absence of tamiflu or aspirin.
The remaining room is the old operating theatre itself. More an amphitheatre really, with horseshoe terraces surrounding the central space beneath the skylight. A lot of medical students used to attend to observe the operations, this being a teaching hospital, and the (mostly destitute) patients had no cause to complain because they were getting their treatment for free. Don't expect gleaming surfaces, the room had a wooden floor because nobody at the time knew any better. Professional surgeons might have worn a special jacket to keep the blood off, but hygiene was still several years from attaining importance. If the patient died they died, and at least someone had had a go at trying to save them.
