Review by Committee member - Peter Hull
On 8th October, the Soutk Eastern Brabch made an evening visit to The Old Operating Theatre, which is situated in St. Thomas's Street, London, SE 1, between London Bridge Station and Guy's Hospital.
There are few museums which have such a strange and fascinating history. The Old Operating Theatre which we now see, was part of a church and had been bricked up for about 100 years before being rediscovered in 1956. It was restored in 1962 and opened as a museum.
The evening started with a few glasses of wine and an opportunity to walk around the museum, which contained a vast selection of medical paraphernsila for examining every part of the human body - both inside and out. There was also a selection of herbs used in medicine and jars of dead leaches which were used for blood letting, - a practice commonly thought to be a good medical cure for most ailments.
Next we went into the tiered theatre, where the lecturer explained the origins of modern day surgery from the barber surgeon to the formation of the Royal College of Surgeons, and the part played by the apothecaries with their herbs to the modern day pharamcists.
We were then told all about how operations were performed in the 1800's. You only had operations in those days if you were at death's door, which was of little consequence, as survival rates were very low !! On the positive side, the surgeons only operated outside the body, typically just removing limbs.
The lecturer then showed us the various instruments which were used for an amputation during that time, at which point our Branch Chair person was "volunteered" to be the patient and have her left leg amputated. In those early days, there was no such thing as anaesthesia or antiseptics. The patient was held down by four burly men on a wooden bench with a gag in their mouth. It would take a good surgeon about thirty seconds to cut through the flesh and a further four minutes to saw through the bone. The cut surface would be dipped in hot oil to cauterise the cut surface and the flesh then sew back to cover the wound. The amputed leg would have fallen into a box of saw dust , which was strategically placed under the operating bench. The surgeon would then was his hands.
Fortunately our Chair Lady survived the operation, so we adjourned to a near by hosterly.
Pictures from the event can be found here.