History of Medicine

These resources have been designed to explore the following topics and to understand how they have changed over time:

• Blood
• Cleanliness
• Patient experience
• Seeing inside the body
• Surgery and war

Subject

These resources support the teaching of History of Medicine curriculum syllabus.

Suitable for

GCSE
A-Level

Learning outcomes

To make links between the Museum’s collections and history curriculum and everyday life.
To develop observation and communication skills.
To learn about how this topic has changed over time.

Time required to complete

45 minutes - 1 hour

Teacher's notes

How to use this resource:

Split your students into groups of four
Assign a topic to each group
Students are asked to explore the Museum and describe two objects linked to their assigned topics. One object will be from before 1800 and one from after 1800. The objects can be paintings, instruments, models, equipment, or specimens.
Print out the blank activity cards and hand out one set to each student

There are object information cards linked to each topic with questions to help the students choose objects and a topic map to find related objects in the Museum. You may want to print a map and info card to hand out to each group.

Different members of the group should record the details of different objects.

By the end of the session each group should have collected at least eight object cards describing eight separate objects. You can collect more objects.

You might notice and want to include objects that are in places not marked on your map.

Back at school, you can ask the students to present and display their objects to the rest of the class.

Glass and metal syringe with needle, lying on its side.

Syringe and hypodermic needle, 1940