I like medical history museums. A lot. To the extent that I have probably made more visits to medical history museums than to actual doctors. So when I say that the Musée de l’Assistance Publique et Hôpitaux de Paris is a particularly good medical history museum, I fully recognize that that might sound to you like “a particularly good NASCAR race” sounds to me.
That said, I think that this place is worth a visit if you are at all interested in medicine, social history, or bizarre artworks commemorating moments in said history, such as a 1908 painting entitled “First Treatments of Cancer by X-Ray” featuring a very professional-looking doctor swathed in white robes accompanied by a top hat. Yesssss.
The ten or so rooms of the museum trace the evolution of French public hospitals from charitable institutions run by religious orders to their current selves. The signage (all in French) is very smart, addressing large issues such as the changing ideas of who belongs in hospitals (e.g., the blind, beggars, homosexuals, criminals, etc.). The whole presentation is very influenced by Foucault – fans can treat the displays as an illustrated version of The Birth of the Clinic. And well-illustrated: there are some serious objects here, like recognition tokens left on abandoned infants, a collection of baby-bottles through the ages, and, as an illustration of the secularization of health care, some rather moving photographs of the ceremonial departure of the last nuns from Paris’ biggest public hospital in the early 20th century.
A note for the squeamish: no worries. This is the least-gross medical history museum I’ve ever seen – not even one anatomical specimen floating in a jar. The worst it gets is a couple of display cases’ worth of historical medical instruments, from the world’s least effective-looking stethoscope to the tools for everybody’s favorite useless medical procedure, trepanation.
P.s.: It’s totally worth going to this museum just to see the reactions of your friends – no one I’ve told so far has been able to resist laughing at the spectacular nerdiness of a trip to what is basically a Museum of Medicare.
