Museo Storico dell'Arte Sanitaria

The National Historic Museum of Sanitary Art was inaugurated in 1933 and is hosted within the hospital complex of Santo Spirito in Sassia. It represents one of the most important historical and scientific testimonies of the art of medicine. In fact one of the tasks of the hospital that was founded in 1198 by Pope Innocent the Third was to teach medicine and for this reason it was equipped with a large Library, an Anatomic Theatre, and an Apothecary shop. The Museum consists of a series of rooms related to the major components of the collections: the Alexandrine Hall (with eighteenth century anatomic tables); the Flaiani Hall (with end of the eighteenth century anatomic-pathologic preparations and wax models); the Capparoni Hall (with Roman-Etruscan ex voto or offerings), portable apothecharies, sixteenth-seventeenth century apothecaryvases; the Carbonelli Hall (with Roman surgical instruments for optical and obstetrical use and a collection of vintage microscopes). There are also two suggestive environments reproduced on a natural scale: an ancient Apothecary and an alchemistic Laboratory.