Old Operating Theatre, Museum and Herb Garret

Address: | 9a St Thomas’ Street, SE1 9RY |
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Phone: | 020-7188 2679 |
Website: | |
Opening times: | Daily 10:30–17:00 |
How to get there: | Tube/Station: London Bridge |
Entry fee: | Admission charge |
Additional information: | No disabled access. Shop |
The operating theatre for the women’s ward of the original St Thomas’s Hospital was constructed in 1822 in the roof space of the church of St Thomas the Apostle adjoining the hospital ward. It was designed to satisfy the new legal requirement that surgeons and their apprentices-in-training observe live operations. Partly dismantled and forgotten when the hospital moved west 40 years later, the operating theatre was only rediscovered in 1956. Following careful restoration, it opened as a museum in 1962, and is now the only surviving example of its type in the country. With its plaster ceiling, bare wooden floor, matchboard walls, and plain operating table of deal, with sawdust box below to catch the blood, the small theatre with its five tiers of standings serves as a salutary and atmospheric reminder of 19th-century surgical practice. |
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MUSEUMS & GALLERIES OF LONDON
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