Old Operating Theatre Museum & Herb Garret

Lonely Planet review

This unique museum, at the top of the narrow and rickety 32-step tower of St Thomas Church (1703), focuses on the nastiness of 19th-century hospital treatment. The garret was used by the apothecary of St Thomas's Hospital to store medicinal herbs and now houses an atmospheric medical museum delightfully hung with bunches of herbs that soften the impact of the horrible devices displayed in the glass cases.

Even more interesting is the 19th-century operating theatre attached to the garret. Here you'll see the sharp, vicious-looking instruments 19th-century doctors used, and you'll view the rough-and-ready conditions under which they operated - without antiseptic on a wooden table in what looks like a modern lecture hall. Placards explain how, without anaesthetic, surgeons had to perform quickly on patients; one minute to complete an amputation was reckoned about right. A box of sawdust was placed beneath the table to catch the blood and guts and contemporary accounts record the surgeons wearing frock coats 'stiff and stinking with pus and blood'. Don't eat lunch before visiting and you probably won't want it afterwards.