State Library of NSW
The State Library of NSW’s latest exhibition Kill or Cure? A Taste of Medicine comes with a warning … not for the faint-hearted!
This immersive exhibition takes you behind the curtain of western medicine’s macabre history – from the knife-wielding barber-doctor to crackpot cures, mysteries of the wandering womb to blood-curdling surgical procedures pre-anaesthesia, and game-changing scientific experiments.
According to curator Elise Edmonds: “The exhibition may be a little unsettling for some; we wanted to evoke the creeping dread of death and disease of the past. It makes you grateful for the scientific breakthroughs of modern medicine.”
The exhibition draws from over 60 rare books in the State Library’s collection to reveal some of the powerful and enduring ideas from Western medicine that have since been debunked.
Wander the hospital-like corridors and into the exhibition’s 10 treatment rooms. Here, you’ll experience the dubious, dangerous and often deadly techniques used to diagnose and treat the sick and diseased from 15th to 19th century.
Before visitors enter, they are asked to take a seat in the waiting area where they are provided with a briefing on the four humours. The four humours underpinned all medical thinking from Ancient Greece through to the 19th century in leading a balanced, healthy life. If the body became sick or diseased, it was understood that their humours were out of balance (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm). This often resulted in a visit to the barber-surgeon for some bloodletting or leeching!
Curator Elise Edmonds is
/Public Release.
