Re-Visiting Chicago’s Buried Treasures

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on May 20, 2005 12:43PM

If you’re interested in surgical tools but didn’t have time to inspect them before you went under the anesthesia during your last triple bypass, check out the International Museum of Surgical Science. Besides an abundance of old and new medical paraphernalia, the museum houses sculptures of your favorite historical medical practitioners (if you have such a person) and kitschy paintings of the medical arts (an “official” Rembrandt replica, Egyptian hieroglyphs). Noteworthy objects include one of the first iron lungs, antique and slightly bemusing wheelchairs, frighteningly unsafe primitive X-ray machines, and an oddly excessive amount of amputation equipment. But perhaps the two high points of the museum’s collection are the trephinated skulls (holes poked through the skull to relieve tension) and the assortment of gallbladder and kidney stones.

While there are so many tools and instruments on display, there is quite a lack of explanatory panels (the museum offers free tours every Saturday at 2pm, at which time you may ask the docent to explain the gory details of the breast amputator). These objects were not made to simply be stared at, yet because they exist as a display in a museum, one cannot help but ponder their severe functionality. Above all, this museum helped us to wonder about the progress of modern medicine, as everything still looks so medieval.

On the fourth floor are two exhibits of contemporary art that reacts and responds to the collection. These exhibits are temporary, so they offer an incentive for returning visitors. And be sure not to miss the recreation of the nineteenth-century apothecary shop; it’s a musty old place that makes you nostalgic for the early days before medicinal practices were so mechanized.

This place is not only a curious blend between art and science, it’s also a great place to think about the nature of collecting. While we may not always wonder how a collection of objects (say, in a fine art museum) gets assembled, the IMISS prompts us to question why and how such an oddity exists. The museum is located in an old mansion on Lake Shore Drive about a half a block south of North Ave. in Lincoln Park.

International Museum of Surgical Science
1524 North Lake Shore Drive
Tuesday-Sunday 10am-4pm
Admission is $6 for adults and $3 for students & Seniors $3

Thanks, Jason!