Mothers Museum
The Mothers Museum in Philadelphia is a museum of medical history affiliated with the College of Physicians of Philadelphia with over 20,000 items in its collection.
history
In 1849, Dr. Isaac Parrish († 1852) a collection of pathological-anatomical specimens for scientific purposes. It was only through the donation of the personal collection of Dr. Thomas Dent Mütters , who offered this in 1856, the inventory of 92 exhibits grew by more than 1700 copies. Mothers had compiled bones, wet specimens , replicas of medical features in wax and other materials, and medical illustrations. In addition to the collection, the offer included a capital of 30,000 dollars, which was intended for the construction and maintenance of a museum building within five years of the signing of the contract. Until Mother's donation, the collection was housed in rented rooms.
In 1859 the college accepted this offer and in 1862 the first museum building on the corner of 13th and Locust Street was moved into. The collections were supplemented by purchases in Europe and donations from numerous medical professionals. From 1871 old medical instruments were also collected. During the course of the Civil War , the Mothers Museum received material on war injuries from the then Army Medical Museum in Washington (now: National Museum of Health and Medicine ). In return, the Army Medical Museum received exhibits from the Mothers Museum that the military surgeons could learn from.
Due to the constant growth of the collection and the library, a new building began in 1908 for the museum on 22nd Street. In the style of the time, the exhibits were packed tightly together in wooden boxes. In 1986 a comprehensive renovation took place. The building received air conditioning and instead of the old wooden boxes, glass showcases were installed.
Special exhibits
In 1874 the Siamese twins Chang and Eng Bunker were autopsied in the Mothers Museum. After the twins were buried, the museum was left with a plaster cast of their bodies and their interconnected livers. The Mothers Museum also owns some of Benjamin Rush's equipment , a wooden stethoscope allegedly made personally by René Laënnec , Florence Nightingale's sewing kit, an electrometer that Marie Curie gave him personally in 1921, and a model of the first functioning cardiopulmonary Machine that was built in 1953. Part of the chest of John Wilkes Booth , the murderer of Abraham Lincoln , can also be seen in the Mothers Museum. Among the photographs in the museum's holdings are pictures of the first two patients in the United States to survive triple amputations. Both had been operated on by James Buckner Luckie .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated December 29, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
Coordinates: 39 ° 57 ′ 11.7 " N , 75 ° 10 ′ 35" W.