Permanent home needed for 3000 fascinating Lancaster medical exhibits

Lancaster Health & Medical Museum Collection (LHMMC) has officially launched their new website where people can explore the city’s rich medical history but their long term goal is to find a permanent site for their exhibits.

Additionally, it hopes to set up an educational programme to explain the rich medical and health history that has evolved in the Lancaster area since Roman times.

LHMMC also wants to introduce in the near future a ‘Friends’ of the Lancaster Health & Medical Museum Collection where anyone with an interest in the health and medical history of the

Lancaster and Morecambe area can, for a small nominal amount, become a ‘Friend’ and through a member only section of the web page enjoy exclusive articles, items of interest, meetings, and so on.

Lancaster’s rich medical history includes, amongst others, Roman surgery, St. Leonard’s leprosy hospital, two famous anatomists, epidemics, jail fever, one of the ‘Black Assizes’, and the

second oldest surviving Medical Book Club in the UK.

Sir Richard Owen, who achieved major advances in surgical science in the nineteenth century, and who coined the word ‘dinosaur’ meaning ‘terrible lizard’, was born in Thurnham Street in

1804 and was one of two famous surgeon-anatomists to be born in Lancaster.

The infamous Dr. Buck Ruxton, who worked as a GP in Dalton Square, Lancaster, was hanged for the murder of his wife and maid in 1935, the investigation laying the foundations for forensic medicine in this country and around the world.

LHMMC is a charity which exists to advance public education by the development, preservation and display of a special collection relating to the history of the practice of medicine, public

health and healthcare in Lancaster and environs and to promote interest in the history of medicine for the benefit of the public. It is affiliated with the British Society for the History of Medicine.

The vast majority of the collection was created by the founders in the 1980s and 90s and now includes around three thousand objects, most of which were collected in the Lancaster area.

Early collectors were Dr. Valerie Anderson, a Hospital Physician working in Lancaster, Dr. John Carne, a Lancaster GP and Dr. John Dyer, a Public Health specialist for the Lancaster area.

They were joined by Dr. Miles Rucklidge, Consultant Anaesthetist based in Lancaster.

The web page at https://lancasterhealthmedicalmuseum.org.uk/ features articles by local medical practitioners, medical historians and members of the Lancaster & Morecambe Medical Book Club

(the second oldest book club in this country established in 1823 ) as well as many other interesting and enlightening items.

Each month one item from the LHMMC collection will be featured in the ‘Object of the Month’ page and the first item for January 2025 is the Royal Lancaster Infirmary collecting barrel

recently donated by Mrs. J Parker.

The barrel dates from around 1896, the first year of the RLI and the building is now in its 128th year.

At that time despite various fundraising events and multiple donations, at the opening ceremony the General Committee discovered that an additional £4,200 was needed for essential items such as furnishing.

The barrel was probably one method to raise some of this additional money.

Lancaster Health & Medical Museum Collection look forward to hearing from interested people and you can register for further information, regular updates, join the ‘Friends’, and generally be informed of items of interest by completing your details on the web page at https://lancasterhealthmedicalmuseum.org.uk/ or by emailing to [email protected].