Medical history collection of the Ruhr University Bochum

Malakow Tower with a collection of medical history

The Medical History Collection of the Ruhr University Bochum is a collection of more than 10,000 instruments and large devices from all disciplines of medicine . It is housed in an old Malakow tower of the former Julius-Philipp colliery from 1877. The sponsor is the Institute for Medical Ethics and the History of Medicine at the Ruhr University Bochum .

The founder of the collection was the physician Erich Püschel . In 1990 he handed over the collection of medical objects from the 19th and 20th centuries, which consisted of 10,000 items and 5,000 books, to the Ruhr University in Bochum. The permanent exhibition “Descent into the Hidden. The conquest of the human body by medical technology “presents the human body inside the tower from the surface to the cell, from prehistoric times to the present, and addresses the history and ethics of medicine. Three of the nine tower levels are occupied by the permanent exhibition, other levels show information about the tower or special exhibitions. The museum is open to the public one morning a week and as part of the public tour on the first Sunday of the month.