THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF HEALTH-CARE ART
The National Museum of Health-Care Art is housed in the Hospital of Santo Spirito in Sassia. Construction of the Hospital was begun by Pope Innocent III in 1198; destroyed by fire in 1471, it was rebuilt by Pope Sixtus IV and has been modified several times over the following centuries.
The original core of the collection was brought together for the International Exhibition of 1911, held in Rome at Castel Sant’Angelo to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Unification of Italy. When the exhibition closed, the collection needed a permanent home: the Hospital of Santo Spirito provided the premises, and the Museum was inaugurated in 1933 under the aegis of the Academy of the History of Health-Care Art.
The collection is displayed in nine large halls.
THE ALEXANDRINE HALL
The largest of the halls is the Alexandrine Hall, also known as “the little hospital of the wounded”. It has served as the Aula Magna since 1971 and seats around 200 people. Along its walls and on the first flights of the staircase hang hand-coloured anatomical prints, made by Antonio Serantony in the early nineteenth century under the scientific guidance of the celebrated anatomist Paolo Mascagni (1752-1815), together with seventeenth-century oil paintings by an unknown artist from the collection of Guglielmo Riva (1627-1677), a famous anatomist and surgeon at the Roman hospital of the Consolazione.
SALA FLAJANI
The first room is reached by a staircase lined with busts of illustrious physicians, the most prominent being that of Hippocrates. It holds a collection of obstetric anatomical wax models and anatomical preparations. At its centre stand the pieces known as the cassapanca (chest) and the tempietto (little temple), used to prepare chinino (quinine), a remedy against malaria.
THE CAPPARONI ROOM
The Capparoni Room exhibits a magnificent collection of objects donated by Professor Capparoni during the last century: an important series of Roman and Etruscan anatomical votive offerings, and surgical instruments from Roman, medieval and Renaissance times. It also holds a noteworthy collection of glass and ceramic vessels used to store medicines.
THE CARBONELLI HALL
The Carbonelli Hall exhibits an important collection of surgical instruments, including drills and specula, and a display case of microscopes of various shapes and periods, from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. At the centre of the hall stands a wooden reproduction of the famous Sistine Ward, an early model of the Hospital of Santo Spirito.
The hall also holds the original cattedra, the teaching chair with its own flight of steps, from which Giovanni Maria Lancisi and his successors gave medical lectures to the staff of the Hospital. Degree certificates, health-care edicts and similar documents are shown in the display cases, while the surrounding walls carry paintings on medical subjects, from the seventeenth century to the present day, and prints by prominent physicians.
THE PHARMACY AND THE ALCHEMICAL LABORATORY
The Museum also features unique reconstructions of a seventeenth-century pharmacy and of a chemical and alchemical laboratory of the same period.
THE LIBRARY
The Museum’s holdings are completed by a fine library, with original sixteenth-century walnut shelving, containing more than 10,000 books, pamphlets, journals and prints on the history of health care and its art.