Medical Museum

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The Medical Museum is not one of the more popular museums to visit in Indy but I found it to be an oppurtunity to see something diffrent. I imagine its because it is not as close to the other museums and does not get alot of publicity. The museum was actually a real housing facilty for the less mentally stable public. The patients unfortunatly were used for medical research. The museum is not a free roaming museum which means you will need to time your visit to a tour of the facility. When the building was turned over as a museum everything was left in place and has been preserved for years. Therefore you may not touch alot of the older tools and such on your tour.

The museum has a room filled with real actual brain samples in jars and are labeled with information. We saw a brain impacted by a bullet and according to the review the patient was childlike after the accident, we also saw a uterus covered with cancer tumors. The look on my sons face as he realized a skeleton he was looking at happened to be real was priceless. I suppose he will have something to pipe up about next year in his biology class. My daughter was fascinated by the display of an artery systems from a hand/arm sprawled out then as paper. The instruments of the past were cool to see as well as the explanations on how sickness spread back in the older times and how they saught out to find cures. There is also a medical garden (small) but nice inbetween the main building and the cold building. The cold building is an Dr.s office which also held the bodies of the deceased at one time hense the name "cold" building. It was intresting to learn that the Dr. would mix his own cough syrup according to the patients needs. The tool bag was opened for view as if he was about to go make house calls.

The tour guide was not very vibrant in giving the information so it would help if you can find the intrest in what you are seeing yourself. Although she was ready to answer any questions including little ones from my 9 yr old daughter. The tour is not very long. I would not suggest this tour if you have children that can not maintain a sense of restrain without touching as they are very strict with that policy for good reasons. Strollers would be a problem to navigate through the tour as well. I do thinks its worth a visit as it is a true version of medical history in the past.

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