What is Medical Museion?

 

Medical Museion is:

A physical exhibition and event site

Our main exhibition and event site is located in Bredgade in the city centre of Copenhagen. The museum occupies the building complex of the former Royal Academy of Surgeons, originally from 1787.

We also have a satellite exhibition area in the main building (the Panum building) of the Faculty of Health Sciences,  Blegdamsvej 3.

A research unit

which is part of the Department of Public Health, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Copenhagen. Our research focuses on medical history, medical humanities, medical science communication and medical museology. We have currently about 10 researchers attached to the unit (see staff list here).

Read more about our research here.

A collection of historical artefacts

The museum was founded on a private initiative to mark the 50th anniversary of the Danish Medical Association in 1907 with a public exhibition of medical historical artefacts.  It remained a public museum until 1918 when it was taken over by the University of Copenhagen.

Today, the collection contains somewhere between 150,000 and 250,000 physical artefacts, depending on the counting measure. We also have a large image collection, an archive, and a historical book collection.

A virtual museum

Medical Museion has been online since late the 1990s. The internationally recognized Biomedicine on Display blog was launched in November 2004 and another blog, Museionblog (in Danish), was started in 2007.

This website (www.museion.ku.dk), launched in October 2011, combines the traditional website with our blogs into an integrated WordPress platform, which also displays our presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.