Destinations: International Museum of Surgical Science

AMBI: LAKE SHORE DRIVE TRAFFIC

MARY REICHARD, REPORTER: Chicago is bustling and beautiful in the late summer — with sailboats on Lake Michigan and skaters, joggers, and pram-pushers along the Lakefront Trail. I’m on the steps of the museum on the other side of the busy roadway when my guide, Justina Doyle, greets me at the front door.

SOUND: KNOCKING ON DOOR

MR: Justina?
JUSTINA: Hi, Mary! Good to see you! Come in...

An enthusiast of the quirky, Justina starts us out easy. I suppose that’s just in case we’re queasy. Here’s a rare book collection, with over 4000 volumes of medical minutiae.

AUDIO: PAGING THROUGH A BOOK

JUSTINA: This is Gray’s Anatomy, copyright 1905, but it was first published in 1858.

The collection includes meticulous detailed anatomical drawings of Andreas Vesalius of Belgium from the 16th century:

JUSTINA: So we have some original prints from Vesalius, who’s really one of the first people to get the drawing of the body correct. His drawings are still used and studied in medical schools today.

Now, it’s easy for us moderns to forget that not so long ago, nobody knew hands spread germs. Germ theory wasn’t a thing yet. Effective pain relief was unknown. People often died young, or under agonizing conditions.

That began to change after the American Civil War, in the 1860s. Vast improvements in medicine came as doctors and nurses learned how to treat the sick and wounded ...and scientific knowledge began to burgeon.

OK- second warning: Cringe-inducing medical history ahead!

JUSTINA: One of our most popular is our numerous amputation kits that we have. We do amputation demonstrations from civil war time…

Well, nobody actually gets anything cut off here. They do simulated battlefield amputations.

AUDIO: SERRATED KNIFE CUTTING WOOD

JUSTINA: You can kind of imagine trying to cut through the bone with this bone saw. The bone is very strong, so the surgeon would have had to be very strong. Also no anesthetic, the patient is going to be screaming a lot, so the surgeon really had to train himself to work through the pain of the procedure.

I’m thinking: The surgeon had to steel himself? How many people would it take to hold a patient down under such circumstances?

JUSTINA: There’s at least 5 people holding the patient down. This is the time when the saying ‘bite the bullet’ comes from, because they’d give the patient all kinds of things to bite down on during the procedure. They’d also give alcohol and in some cases they’d actually hire a professional boxer to come in and knock out the patient before the procedure. (Really?) Yes, I think that’d be my preferred method. But I don’t know about you.

Well. I was ready to move on.

 AUDIO: WALKING

Another room filled with artifacts...here’s a large, vertical, wooden box with a step on one side and two optical tubes on top.

JUSTINA: So here we have our x-ray exhibit. Another really popular exhibit. So I’ll just talk about the shoe fitting x-ray machine in the middle of the room here. So this was very popular - it was in shoe stores across America. Kids loved putting their foot in the back of the machine, there’s a hole in the back, then their parents and a shoe salesman could look in the top of the machine and see a live action x-ray of the child’s foot wiggling around in the shoe. This was before they knew the negative effects of radiation, of course. So once they found that out, these were pulled from shoe stores across America, but I still do get people who come in and remember using these as kids.

I can’t think of a clearer example of good intentions with unintended consequences.

Next, a medical development near and dear to all of us who’ve suffered.

JUSTINA: So we can go through to the left here to the pain exhibit. It’s one of my favorites. The pain and pain management exhibit. Right through here. 

The science of pain management had a bumpy roll out.

JUSTINA: And, also, on this poster here, talks about how heroin was actually developed at the same time as aspirin. They liked it better than aspirin because it was stronger. It was sold through the Sears catalog, so anyone could get their hands on it.

Once it became known that heroin was terribly addictive, legal sales of it ended in 1913.

We move along to The Hall of Murals, oil paintings of milestones in medical history. Italian painter Gregorio Calvi di Bergolo painted twelve panels depicting surgical feats through the ages. Our guide tells us her favorite: a famous doctor named Ephraim McDowell in 1700s Kentucky visited a Mrs. Todd. She told him she thought she was pregnant with twins...

JUSTINA: When he examined her, he actually found that she had a large ovarian tumor. He carried her on horseback 60 miles to his home where he would perform a procedure to remove the tumor. There was no anesthetic during this time, so she is singing church hymns to get herself through the procedure. She was so beloved by the community there was actually a crowd waiting outside to kill the doctor if the procedure did not go well. (Laughs) So, a lot of pressure there. She did live through the procedure. She lived for another 30 years after. MR: Lucky for the doctor. (Laughs)

AUDIO: WALKING

Next, The Hall of Immortals: a majestic room, all white with 14-foot ceilings, enormous picture windows overlooking the blue expanse of choppy waves on the lake. A dozen life-sized statues of people who brought mankind medical advancement line the room like stony lecturers.

JUSTINA: We go all the way through from Imhotep, who is the earliest known physician in 2700 BC, to Hippocrates, who we all know as the father of medicine, pictured there with his Hippocratic oath on the scroll.

Greek physician Hippocrates, born in 460 B.C. The one who said “First, do no harm.”

Other giants of medicine here: Louis Pasteur, who developed pasteurization methods and the rabies vaccine. Wilhelm Roentgen, who discovered X-rays in 1895. Joseph Lister, maker of disinfectant spray... and Listerine!

And this important figure:

JUSTINA: Then we have Semmelweis, who is actually one of my favorites. He’s one of the first people in history to say we should be washing our hands in hospitals, which to us is like, why didn’t they already know that, right? But, during his time period, it was thought that if you were a true gentleman, your hands were already clean and there was no need to wash them. So he’s watching people going from dissecting bodies in the morgue in the morning right to birthing babies in the afternoon without washing their hands. So he said, “Let’s try washing our hands with a little bit of water and chlorine and see what that does.” Well, that drastically cuts down on the mortality rate in the birthing suite, which was really good, but as we know throughout history, people don’t really like change.

Poor Ignaz Semmelweis. Despite clear evidence of the worth of his germ theory, he was ridiculed for it. Even his wife didn’t believe him. He later died in an asylum, having lost his mind. An important reminder:

JUSTINA: ….important to remember that medical history hasn’t just been a straightforward path of discovery. There has definitely been a few bumps along the way.

Perhaps an understatement? Listen to this:

 JUSTINA: This poster over here talks about how women were using radiation as a form of hair removal, and they were using radium makeup because they liked the way it glowed better than other makeup. So we look at all these things, and we think what were these people thinking? Really? But we have to keep it all in perspective, because people in the future are probably going to look back at us and think the same thing. We may end up in a museum some day.

AMBI: VINTAGE ELEVATOR

We took the vintage elevator back to the ground floor.

I thought of what I’d seen: an iron lung machine where some people had spent their entire lives after the dreaded polio diagnosis, before vaccines; spring loaded devices used in the early 1900s to break the legs of children with bowed legs and then reset them straight... I had a renewed feeling of gratitude that I live in a day of anesthesia, decent prosthetic devices, antibiotics, and trained doctors.

And yet, the medical frontier remains unconquered. Who knows what future discoveries will fill future rooms in museums?

Reporting from Chicago for WORLD Radio, I’m Mary Reichard.

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