Truth be told, I’d never heard of the Musée de la Médicin or the Hospices de Hautefort, and it was only because I got over excited and drive about 50km out of my way to see the Château de Hautefort, that I saw the signs and thought I’d take a look.
The hospices date back to the 17th century and now house a museum of medicine. I guessed it might be similar to the Hospices de Beaune which was fascinating, but when I arrived I wasn’t really sure if I was in the right place as from the outside it looked like a church. I walked round the corner and discovered that the tourist office seems to have taken up residence inside, so I decided to ask.
The visit cost 5€ which seemed a bit expensive as from the outside I was expecting just one or two rooms, but actually it was two large rooms downstairs depicting the hospice part where people suffering from the plague were cared for. I was quite freaked out by the mannequin at the far end which was to illustrate the clothes warn to protect against catching the plague. The get-up included a white mask with long beak-like nose which was filled with essential oils and herbs so that the carer didn’t have to breath the same air as the plague victims, but it just looked like death in a white mask – not what I’d want to see if I was ill!
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Unlike at Beaune, the museum upstairs did not concentrate solely on medieval medicine, but instead showed the progression over the centuries of medical knowledge and care. There was for example a room dedicated to dentistry where as well as the various tools and equipment, they had arranged four ‘surgeries’ complete with furnishings from the 1870’s, 1920’s, 1940’s right up to the 1970’s – eek! They’d done the same for surgical instruments and equipment.
Outside was a tiny herb garden which in the times of the hospices would have been used to help medicate the patients. Completely different to Beaune and on a much smaller scale, this was still definitely worth a visit.
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