Three cheers for random and strange Chicago museums. LK and Eric and I journeyed down Lakeshore Drive to the International Museum of Surgical Science. I am always one for quirky and potentially nerdy learning experiences so I already figured that I'd enjoy the place, but I really truly got a kick out of this old mansion turned museum. I know several things now. 1. I am grateful for my health (an excellent point made by LK). I get the dry heaves at the thought of any of those instruments without glass casing between us. 2. I will never be a surgeon. The thought of using any of those instruments on any living being...gives me the dry heaves. 3. A museum focused on primitive and modern healing practices of Eastern and Western civilization...makes me ill.
No really, the place was fascinating. Some of the highlights for me were the polio treatment bits, the enormous x-ray machine once found in shoe stores to help size feet for the perfect shoe, the faux dentist's office you could peer at through a faux window, the breathtaking and ornate amputation saw, oh and the paintings were pretty impressive. There is even an original Rembrandt. Oh yes. It was a painting of a surgery.
At the end of this day, I retire thinking about how, indeed, advancements in medical technology are awesome but also about how the tools used for brain surgery in ancient Egypt look much the same as the tools used today. And I get the dry heaves one last time.
1 comment:
You should stop by and see the Dental School Museum around UNL Homecoming time next year (if you are in Lincoln)...they have instruments on loan from ancient Pompeii (spelling?). It is quite cool, very interesting, but makes me very glad to be living in 2008!
-Jillian
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