Exhibition in the store window of the House of Physicians, February 1938. Věstník československých lékařů 50/11 (March 3, 1938), 415

The Medical Museum of the National Medical Library, founded as the Museum of Physicians (Lékařské muzeum) in 1934, celebrates incredible 90 years. Moving locations and changing names, it has persevered, rich in its unique collections, the creativity of its staff, and the history of health care it reflects, represents, and questions.

The museum started small and remained small. Time after time, it was expected to grow into a major memory institution and a memorial to the triumphs of Czech medical science, to the role of medicine and doctors in building the Czechoslovak state, or to health care provided to all. Just as often, it was on the edge of survival, short of both storage and exhibition space, evoking little interest from the media, the authorities, and the public. It was never short of people: in each generation, new enthusiasts from among physicians, historians, librarians, curators, or collectors arose, ready to devote their learning, time, and labor to the museum. In each generation, advocates of the museum in professional organizations, the medical library, and the government, donors and visitors arrived. At least a few names should be mentioned: Professor František Šamberger (1871-1944), who first raised the idea of a medi-cal museum, at the assembly meeting of the Medical House Board on February 13, 1934; Professor Karel Hübschmann (1881-1981), a leading spirit of the museum from its first years until the 1970s; Viktor Palivec (1908-1989), the Librarian of the Medical Library and the Curator of the museum collections; Božena Petrlíková (b. 1925), the Curator during both adverse and hopeful postwar years, as well as Ludmila Cuřínová (1948-2008), who helped bring the museum back to life after 1991. The museum has always been closely connected with the Prague medical library. Thanks are due to its management, to the Directors Karel Růžička (1911-1994), who had worked in both institutions before the war and continued to promote and defend the museum during the 1960s, Dr. Otakar Pinkas, and above all, Dr. Helena Bouzková, under whose leadership the NML Medical Museum has entered the twenty-first century.

The project, the layout, and the physical collections of the Medical Museum took shape gradually, both in 1934 and in the following years. During the anniversary year, we will continue to add to its story and introduce the events and the people that have shaped the museum and the most interesting items in its present collection.

Medical Museum Exhibition Hall, 2024. Photograph by Veronika Löblová

We look forward to Your visit. Every Thursday 2-4, or, during workdays, call us (296 335 964), write to us, or speak to our colleagues in the NML Information Center.

From Smallpox to COVID: Vaccination in the Czech Lands

The exhibition is open during the library hours in the National Medical Library Information Center.

Plagues 1521-2021

From the plague to COVID-19: the paths and the blind alleys of “wars against germs” across centuries

a NML Medical Museum exhibition

Object of the Month: December 2022

Christmas Eve Menu, The Economical Cook Book of Prague (1819)

Die wirtschaftliche Prager Köchinn II (1819), 677. NML Medical Museum, Old Prints Collection, T 258

Object of the Month: July 2022

Theriac

Gregor Johann Mendel and His Greens: for the 200 Anniversary

Do you have a good recipe for Cook’s and Mendel’s vegetables?

Object of the Month: June 2022

Cautery to Stop Haemorrhage and to Cure Plague

Object of the Month: April 2022

Knife for Cutting Clothes and Boots of the Injured

Reader, Beware! A Warning Issued by the Czech Relief Association for Lung Disease Victims, 1912

Object of the Month: March 2022 Reader, Beware: Books Not Licked Do Not Transmit TB

Object of the Month: February 2022

Fan-Shaped Spatula

This butterfly is (in) oculated.

Are You?

Object of the Month: January 2022

Object of the Month: December 2021

Vaccination Protects my Life

Object of the Month: November 2021

A Charm Against Tuberculosis?

Object of the Month: October 2021

Hospital Lung Ventilator KPT-N

Object of the Month: September 2021

Urotropin

Object of the Month: August 2021

Pneumothorax After Küss, Waldek and Wagner, Prague, around 1925

Object of the Month: July 2021 Surgeon’s Diploma Issued to Franz Gebell, Wien, 1836

Object of the Month: June 2021

The Oldest Vaccination Attest in the Medical Museum Collection

Object of the Month: May 2021 Vaccination Certificate, 1828

Object of the Month: April 2021

A Vaccine Pen

Object of the Month: March 2021

Jet Injector from the Smallpox Eradication Campaign

Object of the Month: February 2021

Altest

Celebrating all those who kept Dry February even during the pandemic

Object of the Month: January 2021

Bacilínek

The NML Medical Museum is closed to the public until further notice.

We wish all our visitors and friends good health and look forward to your visit in a new, better and calmer year 2021.

SARS-CoV-2 Plush Virus, GIANTMicrobes, 2020. NML Medical Museum Visual Art Collection, V 103. Photograph by Petra Vobecká

Object of the Month: December 2020

COVID-19 Plush Virus

Object of the Month: November 2020

Corrosive Sublimate: A Disinfectant Against the Virus, 1918

Object of the Month: October 2020

Gastro Safe Zone

Object of the Month: September 2020

A Woman Protected from Cholera (1831)

Filip Heyduk, Postage Stamp thanking all those on the front lines of the fight against COVID-19. Czech Post, 2020.

Object of the Month: August 2020

The COVID-19 Pandemic on A Postage Stamp

The COVID exhibition and collection in the Medical Museum continues to grow.

If you can contribute masks, images or other objects connected to COVID-19 and the 2020 pandemic, please think of us. When the pandemic is over, we will have things to remember the virus and our shared effort to defeat it.

Photograph by Veronika Löblová

Object of the Month: July 2020

Remdesivir

What kind of a COVID exhibit does not show a cure?

Object of the Month: June 2020

Igráček Figures With Face Masks

COVID 19 – 2020

A New – and Growing – Exhibition in the NML Medical Museum

From the growing COVID 19 collection of the Medical Museum: as the disease abates in the Czech Lands and continues in the world, we continue to gather objects that document the plague times.

By previous appointment, the Medical Museum of the National is open to the public again starting July 7, 2020. Limited space and the need to maintain hygienic precautions forces us to limit the number of visitors: please, call us at +420-296 335 964 or write to us at muzeum@nlk.cz before coming to visit.

When entering the National Medical Library and the museum premises, please use the contactless disinfectant stand located in the library lobby. For research visitors, disposable gloves will be provided.

We wish you the best of health and look forward to your visit.

History of Vaccination in the Czech Lands

A New Pocket Exhibition in the NML Medical Museum

Object of the Month: May 2020

Surgical Face Mask, 1970s- 1980s

Edmonton Bulletin, October 24. 1918. During the 1918-1920 “Spanish flu” pandemic some cities advised or required wearing masks when in contact with patients or on public transport.

Object of the Month: April 2020

Bülau Chest Drainage Apparatus

Object of the Month: March 2020

Leyser Medical Thermometer

The thermometer has helped catch and pinpoint disease for 170 years. Just 170 years?

Object of the Month: February 2020

Coin-Catcher after Graefe

Object of the Month: January 2020

Teplo-Fornax

What were the devices both healthy and ill people used to get warm?

Medical Museum Exhibition:

General Medical Practice: Past to Present

Object of the Month: December 2019

Pálava Ingha II Electric Blanket, 1960s

Exhibition: Care for the Feet in 20 Century Czechoslovakia

Christmas in the Military Quarantine Hospital in Pague-Pohořelec, between 1915-1917. NML Medical Museum Photographic Archive, FA 1417.

We wish all our friends, guests and visitors beautiful holidays and only joy in the coming year!

Object of the Month: November 2019

Biocard EKG, 1980-1990

In memory of Prof. Zdeněk Ježek, DrSc. (1932- 2019)

We are sad to hear of the passing of the epidemiologist Zdeněk Ježek on Sunday, November 24. As a WHO expert, Prof. Ježek participated in the smallpox eradication programme, concluded in 1979. In the 1960s he helped build the healthcare system in Mongolia, in the 1970s he worked first in India, where smallpox was defeated in 1975, and since 1977 in Somalia, the last country plagued by smallpox epidemics. In the 1980s he moved to the WHO central offices in Geneve to lead the smallpox surveillance program and later, the WHO HIV/ AIDS programme. In 1995, he led the campaign to liquidate an ebola epidemic in Zaire.

In 2010, we had the honour to meet prof. Ježek and cooperate on the exhibition Death of Smallpox, which recalled not only the 20 anniversary of the Declaration of Global Eradication of Smallpox, signed in Geneve on May 8, 1980, but especially the contribution of Czechoslovak epidemiologists to the struggle against this disease in Asia and Africa, their solidarity with people in faraway lands, their love for their discipline, courage and passion. We remember him as an extremely kind, erudite, and above all wise human being.

May he rest in peace.

Jet injector for mass vaccination ( Semco/ Vernitron, 1976) used by Czechoslovak physicians in the smallpox eradication campaign in Somalia in the late 1970s. NML Medical Museum, P 140.

The Time of the Velvet Revolution, 1989

An Exhibit in the NML Medical Museum, November-December 2019

Democratic Revolution 1989 on the pages of the Institute of Contemporary History

Object of the Month: October 2019

Stimul 3 Electroacupuncture device

Object of the Month: September 2019

Bezoar Stone: Tricholith

Object of the Month: August 2019

Marienbad Mineral Water Bottle

Object of the Month: July 2019

Bullet-drawer (Kugelzieher) after Garengeot, first half of the 18 century

Object of the Month: June 2018

A 1930s Urine Testing Set

Object of the Month: May 2019

National Medical Library on a Historical Photograph

New Objects on View in the NML Medical Museum

Menstrual aids in Czechoslovakia, 1970s.

Hygienic tampons Taneta (Rico Veverská Bitýška, since 1973) and Imuna, the „white mice“ (weisse Mäuse) imported from the DDR (VEB Vliestextilient Lößnitztal, 1970s-80s). Hungarian-made cotton sanitary pads.

Finds in First-Aid Boxes

From the left: First-Aid kit contents, 1930s-50s From the estate of dr. Ferdinand Najvar, Šumperk (1912-1979). More First-Aid kit contents, 1960s-80s

Photograph by Petra Lendlerová

Photography by František Nič

Object of the Month: April 2019

Repairing the Schimmelbusch Syringe

Object of the Month: March 2019

Irrigator Eguisier: 19 Century Contraception

In Her Own Voice: The Story of Women’s Emancipation. The story, which includes NML Medical Museum objects, is being told at the Naprstek Museum from April 29 till December 29, 2019.

ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF THE RED CROSS IN CZECHOSLOVAKIA A new exhibition in the Medical Museum commemorates the centenary of the Czechoslovak Red Cross Organization.

The exhibition Man-Made Man (Člověk v náhradách), which we have prepared together with the National Technical Museum and the Charles University, has been awarded 3rd Prize in the Museum of the Year category of the National Museum Competition Gloria Musealis 2018.

Further objects from our collections – including a jet injector used in the smallpox eradication campaign in Somalia in the 1970s – appeared at the exhibtions Czechoslovakia in 100 objects. History of University and Republic 1918-2018 exhibition in the Prague Carolinum,

The museum collections, including old prints, are available for on-site study as well. The museum lends objects primarily for exhibition purposes. For loans, photographs, visits and consultation, please contact:

Medical Museum, National Medical Library

121 32 Prague 2, Sokolska 54 (courtyard building)

Head: Simon Krysl

Tel: 00420 296 335 964

The book catalogue of the Medical Museum can be accessed through the MEDVIK portal.https://muzeum.nlk.cz/2019/01/predmet-mesice-leden-2019/

Předmět měsíce: srpen 2020