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Museum Mysteries: The Mummy in the OR
By Sarah Alger (Regular Contributor) When, in the early 1800s, a patient was brought into the surgical amphitheater at Massachusetts General Hospital, he or she was likely blinded by the terror of...
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Museum Mysteries: Your Brain on Laughing Gas
Figuier L. Les Merveilles de la Science ou Description Populaire des Inventions Modernes. Paris, 1868. By Sarah Alger (Regular Contributor) While in the dentist’s chair on a recent morning, I...
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Museum Mysteries: The Missing Cornerstone
By Sarah Alger (Regular Contributor) “When in distress, every man becomes our neighbour.” So wrote Drs. James Jackson and John Collins Warren in a letter they circulated to their Beacon Hill community...
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Museum Mysteries: Dr. Cabot’s Cabinet of Curiosities
By Sarah Alger During the past 200 years, Massachusetts General Hospital has seen buildings rise, come down, and others rise in their place, and has grown to more than 20,000 employees, some of whom...
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Anesthesia: Who Knew What When?
By Sarah Alger Accounts by patients of surgery before anesthesia are harrowing, to say the least. Reading one description by a man who underwent an amputation in 1843—a scant three years before the...
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Museum Mysteries: When the Artifact You Have is Not the Artifact You Thought
By Michelle Marcella (Guest Contributor) Boston’s Province House. Courtesy the Boston Public Library. When the Massachusetts General Hospital was chartered by the Massachusetts Legislature in 1811,...
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Museum Mysteries: Walter Dodd and His X-Ray Tube
Walter Dodd’s X-ray tube. By Sarah Alger On display at the Russell Museum is the first X-ray tube to be used at Massachusetts General Hospital. Mounted on a small wooden stand and its interior dulled...
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Museum Mysteries: Butterscotch, Fish Juice and Castaways
by Sarah Alger Sea water analysis from the MGH laboratory notebook. In Massachusetts General Hospital’s collection is a laboratory notebook that details experiments conducted in 1944 and 1945. Tidy...
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Our Genetic Dark Matter
By Sarah Alger Our museum here at Massachusetts General Hospital is one not just about medical history, but also about modern-day innovation, and by extension, researchers grappling with today’s...
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Museum Mysteries: Santa’s Epidemiology
By Tegan Kehoe (Guest Contributor) One of the quirks of being a medical museum is that some of our most interesting stories are ones we are very glad not to be able to tell with artifacts. In 1966 a...
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Museum Mysteries: Murder Bottles
By Michelle Marcella A 19th-century baby bottle. Behind the scenes at the Russell Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General Hospital, there sits a box labeled “Collection of...
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Museum Mysteries: Questioning an Evocative Image of Madame Curie
By Jeffrey Mifflin Photograph by N.M. Jeannero, Pittsburgh Sun, 1921 Until recently, a vintage photograph in an old frame at the Massachusetts General Hospital Archives bore the caption, “Pierre Curie...
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Museum Mysteries: Funny-Looking Scissors and the Empire State Building
By Tegan Kehoe Often, the best way to solve a museum mystery is to go straight to the source. In March, the Paul S. Russell, MD Museum of Medical History and Innovation at Massachusetts General...
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Museum Mysteries: The Intern’s Step
By Sarah Alger The original building of Massachusetts General Hospital, opened 1821. Massachusetts General Hospital’s first building, designed by renowned architect Charles Bulfinch and opened in 1821,...
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Museum Mysteries: The Flesh and Bones of Dr. John Collins Warren
By Jeffrey Mifflin John Collins Warren with memento mori, circa 1846. Dr. John Collins Warren (1778-1856), renowned surgeon and co-founder of the Massachusetts General Hospital, is interred at tranquil...
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Stone Babies: The Lithopedion of Sens
By Helen King (Regular Contributor) When Colombe Chatry, a tailor’s wife, died in May 1582 at the age of 68, at her husband’s request her body was opened up to discover what had happened to a pregnancy...
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