Old Operating Theatre Museum

High up in the attic of a church, accessible only by a narrow spiral staircase, is Europe's oldest surviving operating theatre. Built in eighteen twenty-two as part of St Thomas' Hospital, it was used for surgery on women patients from the adjoining ward. And when we say surgery, we mean something closer to controlled butchery.

Before eighteen forty-seven, there were no anaesthetics. None. Patients were given alcohol, opiates, and what the hospital records euphemistically call "mental preparation." Then the surgeon would cut. Speed was everything — the best surgeons could amputate a leg in under ninety seconds. The operating table sits in the middle of a semicircular viewing gallery, like a tiny amphitheatre. Medical students packed the standing rows to watch. Sawdust was spread on the floor to soak up the blood.

When St Thomas' Hospital moved to a new site in eighteen sixty-two, the operating theatre was sealed up and forgotten. The attic above the church was used for storing hospital supplies, and eventually nobody remembered what was up there. For nearly a hundred years, one of the most important rooms in the history of British medicine sat in the dark, untouched.

In nineteen fifty-six, a historian named Raymond Russell was researching the old hospital and wondered what was in the sealed attic. He climbed up, found the theatre virtually intact, and the rest is museum history.

The attic itself was originally used by the hospital apothecary to dry medicinal herbs. The herb garret is still there, alongside the operating table. You can see the original drying racks next to the surgical instruments. Healing and horror in the same room.