Having spotted I have 14 omissions on Londonist's definitive list of Free Museums In London, I thought I'd better visit two of them. And also one they missed, all on a similar medical theme.
You'll find this one just up the road from Moorgate station inside the HQ of the British Red Cross Society, a 7-storey office block formerly occupied by Allied Insurance. It has excellent opening hours because it's a single room just off reception so can be enjoyed by visitors and members of the public at any time. It's also very dimly lit, which is either to protect the contents or because someone had forgotten to turn the light on.
What you're getting is a whistlestop history of an esteemed humanitarian organisation plus a selection of objects that remind us crises can be challenged with compassion. The Red Cross was originally the idea of a Swiss businessman, our national chapter created during a war in 1870 when Britons weren't involved but thought they could help out. The museum displays a battered Red Cross flag waved during that Franco-Prussian conflict, also a small concertina-type lamp from the earlier Crimean War thought to have been used by Florence Nightingale. When battlefields became more dangerous one tactic was to send millions of food parcels, for example in 1915 a Christmas gift box where non-smokers had the pipe, tobacco, cigarettes and lighter switched for acid drops and writing materials. Prisoners of war received Red Cross assistance too, one particularly evocative item on display being a patchwork quilt stitched by women in a Japanese camp to send secret messages to their husbands in a separate hospital. More recently refugees have been a major focus of the Red Cross's work, not to mention disasters closer to home such as the Gloucester floods in 2007, for which reason the museum displays a big blue can of Tesco new potatoes identical to that which graced my kitchen cupboard at the time. The final case displays a range of bandages and ends with hand sanitiser and a disposable blue mask, jarringly familiar but which one day will be a reminder to future generations of the Red Cross's ongoing adaptability.
The museum won't detain you long but there are also archives beyond, also fresh themed displays in reception, also several former themed displays permanently saved online. I left a little humbler than when I entered, and also convinced that a lot more organisations ought to tuck a museum into their foyer because as PR goes it's an easy win.
Royal College of Nursing Library & Museum Location: 20 Cavendish Square, W1G 0RN [map] Open: 10am - 7pm (until 5pm Sat, closed Sun) Admission: free Subtitle: past caring Website:rcn.org.uk/library/Museum-and-Events Time to set aside: 15+ minutes
The RCN exists to support and represent the nursing profession so it makes sense their London HQ would have a library, and this includes an intriguing museum space that's less paraphernalia, more attitudes. Don't aim for the main door on Cavendish Square, head round the side to the entrance shared with the Trampoline café. Be sure to ask carefully at the desk where precisely the exhibits are because they could be round the liftshaft or downstairs in a separate room at the far end of the library or both, and even now I'm not entirely sure.
If I've got this right the museum focuses on temporary themed exhibitions rather than a permanent display, these readily packed up so they can be sent to the RCN's other hubs in Cardiff and Edinburgh. The current theme around the liftshaft is The Art of Nursing (subtitled Creativity, Resistance, Renewal), a lot of which is cardboard placards with heartfelt slogans. I loved the full-size knitted nurses by reception representing all eras and grades from District Nurse to Ward Sister, also the stained glass triptych at the foot of the stairs (although I think that's permanent). The main exhibits aim to shatter the stereotype that nurses are quiet women in prim uniforms, comparing their Ladybird book illustration with radical newsletters, proud portraits and proper photos. Florence Nightingale's pioneering coxcomb diagram confirms that nurses can change policy, not just care for the sick.
I've missed out because the latest concurrent exhibition opens tomorrow but you needn't miss out because all the exhibitions are put online, so here's the current one, here's the last one on prison nursing and here's a prescient one on pandemics from 2018. There's more to nursing than the uniform.
Museum of Anaesthesia Location: 21 Portland Place, W1B 1PY [map] Open: 10am - 4pm (weekdays only) Admission: free Subtitle: won't put you to sleep Website:anaesthetists.org/Home/Heritage-centre Time to set aside: up to 30 minutes
Just up the road from Broadcasting House, and not far from the nurses, is where the Association of Anaesthetists has its home. You have to ring the bell to get in and will then be directed down a thin Georgian staircase to a clinical basement corridor, at the end of which is a small two-bay museum. Implements and accoutrements on the left, full-on face-hugging machines on the right. And it's very well done.
The application of anaesthesia took root in 1846 when an American dentist offered ether rather than hypnotism for a tooth extraction. This ended badly because he fluffed the dosage, but the process snowballed globally within a couple of years and soon operations became something you survived, or at least failed to notice the pain. Some of the early equipment is rather intrusive - how best to keep an airway open? - also very varied as several analgesic agents were introduced. But the profession became inexorably better at keeping their patients alive as well as unconscious, so as you work round the cabinets the gizmos get more technical, more reliable and more adaptable to different medical situations. It's not every museum that has drawers labelled Needles, Syringes, Masks and Harnesses, or indeed advice on how best to apply ketamine. The larger machines are displayed in a manner that resembles an overactive operating theatre, and include a valve-pumped device called a Pulmoflator and an electronic emergency ventilator rushed out to service the start of the Covid pandemic. If you were put under during your early life, maybe that Boyles Machine did the donkey work.
I don't think I'd recommend a visit if you're about to go in for surgery, if only because what you'll see here isn't what the NHS now uses. But I came away reassured that the risks are low, the profession is very skilled and the fundamentals have been much refined over the years. The ideal anaesthetic hasn't yet been discovered (fast onset, quickly reversible, no side effects) but we're getting closer, and one day hopefully that knockout discovery will be made.
The website medicalmuseums.org has details of 28 London Museums of Health and Medicine, so if today's trio haven't inspired you hopefully the others will.
