Hebe's Shang Ting and Stacey set off for another one of their trips in and about Leeds and headed off to the Thackray Medical Museum to see what it was all about.
Officially
A museum that acknowledges the Leeds of long ago when disease and death was rife. It’s a journey through medical history.
Unofficially
You begin by selecting a character with a certain illness and lifestyle and throughout the museum you discover everything from your character's dwelling to the cure for their illness, which is so interesting. The first part of the museum is a reacreation of the streets of Leeds which are eerie and smelly but this only adds to the atmosphere. The whole museum has a interesting and educational atmosphere but it was a bit scary as we were the only two visiting the museum at the time. The journey through the whole musuem takes time and requires concentration at times. You can either browse through the museum or take time to read into each poster and exhibit. We did a bit of both :-).
The surgical section towards the end has a real life video of an amputation which made us a bit squeamish. We cringed a little bit while watching a video of the doctor saw through a patient’s leg in one of the first painless surgical procedures. There is also a theatre in the museum which shows a staged video of an amputation before anaesthetic, the Hannah Dyson story. The story is based on Hannah Poynton who trapped her leg in some machinery in 1823. It is definitely not for the fainthearted.
The sections on disease are still a bit creepy, especially with the strange crazy-eyed mannequins. The section on how the body works or the ‘life section’ was great for kids unfortunately we ran out of time as we didn’t expect the museum to take more than two hours but it did and we didn’t even read half the boards, books and items that were on offer. We would definitely go back again as we missed a lot of it towards the end(and we could as we were given free return passes after we paid, which was a nice touch).
Stacey says 'I honestly felt like I was a child again learning so many things about history that I learned when I was young. The interactive parts of the museum were so much fun although some parts were quite gory! It's amazing to see the medical advancements of the last century. We have come so far and we should feel lucky at how easy we have it now. Ouch!. My favourite part was seeing Shang Ting try on the pregnancy belly; she nearly toppled over :-).'
STP says 'I actually like how creepy it was, what other feeling can you expect when you going to a medical museum, right? Afterwards I read from the book Haunted Leeds by Kenneth Goor which says that the recreated Victorian street sections are the most haunted within the whole museum because the ghosts supposedly recognized the street scene and think they are still alive. Glad I didn't know this before I went!'