The Operating Theatre: 250 years of Surgery in Hospitals

Access to The Operating Theatre: 250 years of Surgery in Hospitals is included with free entry to the Hunterian Museum.

Through paintings, photographs and design plans, The Operating Theatre: 250 years of Surgery in Hospitals traces over two centuries of social and technological change; as advances in pain-relief and germ-control, hospital architecture and medical technology radically changed the operating theatre environment.

The exhibition includes a recently re-discovered eighteenth century painting, a rare depiction of a patient undergoing a leg amputation in a London hospital. The painting vividly brings to life the extreme agony of surgery for the patient and the different skills required of surgeons before the introduction of anaesthesia and antiseptic surgery.

Meanwhile shifts in cultural, political and ethical viewpoints transformed how theatres were funded and who controlled their use and presentation. The need to raise awareness of the work of surgical teams was balanced with patient confidentiality - this was shifted when patients themselves gave permission for their operations to be filmed, bringing public attention to the realities of surgery.

The final section of the exhibition brings visitors into the modern operating theatre through contemporary paintings and photographs. With images of surgical teams working in NHS hospitals today, showing how the operating theatre continues to adapt to new technologies, techniques and collaborative ways of working.