An entire operation theatre from the 1700's was discovered in the roof of a London church in the 1950's.
The Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret is a museum of surgical history and one of the oldest surviving operating theatres. It is located in the garret of St Thomas's Church, Southwark, in London, on the original site of St Thomas' Hospital. The entrance had been walled up and the room undisturbed. The operating table has cuts in it left from amputations and other procedures.
Hidden for almost a century in the attic of St Thomas' Church the oldest operating theatre in Britain is now part of a museum. This precious building now houses a collection of pre-anaesthetic tools, items relating to medicine in the home and various Apothecary displays. The museum aims to preserve the theatre and items relating to medicine, in order to contribute to the understanding of the development of medical knowledge, with particular reference to St Thomas' hospital.
The patients were mainly poor people who were expected to contribute to their care if they could afford it. Rich patients were treated and operated on at home rather than in hospital. The patients at the Old Operating Theatre were all women. Until 1847, surgeons had no recourse to anaesthetics and depended on swift technique (surgeons could perform an amputation in a minute or less), the mental preparation of the patient, and alcohol or opiates to dull the patient’s senses. Thereafter, ether or chloroform started to be used. The Operating Theatre had closed down before antiseptic surgery was invented. The majority of cases were for amputations or superficial complaints as, without antiseptic conditions, it was too dangerous to do internal operations. A description of the students packing the theatre to witness an operation has been left by a St Thomas surgeon, John Flint South. The first two rows ... were occupied by the other dressers, and behind a second partition stood the pupils, packed like herrings in a barrel, but not so quiet, as those behind them were continually pressing on those before and were continually struggling to relieve themselves of it, and had not infrequently to be got out exhausted. There was also a continual calling out of "Heads, Heads" to those about the table whose heads interfered with the sightseers.
Patients put up with the audience to their distress because they received medical treatment from some of the best surgeons in the land, which otherwise they could not afford. Wealthy patients of the surgeons would have been operated on, by choice, at home, probably on the kitchen table. The risk of death at the hands of a surgeon was greatly increased by the lack of understanding of the causes of infection. Although cleanliness was a moral virtue, descriptions suggest that a surgeon was as likely to wash his hands after an operation as before. The old frock coats worn by surgeons during operations were, according to a contemporary, 'stiff and stinking with pus and blood'. Beneath the table was a sawdust box for collecting blood. The death rate was further heightened by the shock of the operation, and because operations took place as a last resort, patients tended to have few reserves of strength.
The Herb Garret was so called by the Grand Committee of St Thomas' Hospital when, in 1821, they ordered that an operating theatre be built in the garret of the church to serve the patients of the hospital. Little is known of its function beyond its name and the discovery of poppy heads in the rafters. It was presumably used to store and dry herbs for the hospital's apothecary. At about the same time as the operating theatre was built, the garret was reroofed and dormer windows inserted. It has been conjectured that this may suggest the garret changed use, perhaps becoming a recovery ward. In 1962, after 100 years of disuse, the garret and operating theatre were opened to the public as the current museum.
