Operating Theatre (click here to be taken back to our collections webpage)

The George Marshall Medical Museum has a reconstructed operating theatre from the second half of the 19th century. At this time both anaesthetics and antiseptics were available. The table the patient is lying on is one of the original operating tables from the former Worcester Infirmary. Why not come along to the Museum and take a look? If you do plan on visiting us, have a go at surgery for yourself in our online game before you come. Click here to be taken to an operating theatre in 1845, where you will have to amputate a leg without the use of anaesthesia!

Historically, watching an operation was one of the only ways that medical students could learn how to perform that operation correctly. The spectators would be seated around the patient, who would lie on a raised chair or bed. This is where the term 'operating theatre' comes from.

Thankfully, for the patient in our Museum, both anaesthetics and antiseptics were available and being used. However, those requiring surgery before this time would have undergone excruciating pain as a surgeon performed his task without anaesthesia. To stop a patient wriggling around too much they would have been tied to a surgery chair, like the chair in the Museum (right). This chair was used in the former Worcester Infirmary in Castle Street in the early 1800s. If you pop in to the Museum you will be able to see clearly the holes along the side of the chair's back, and you may also spot the marks left by the knives of the surgeons!