Museum of London

Yesterday we went to the Museum of London and were able to walk through and see the evolution of London from the beginning!! It was really wonderful to see all of the artifacts and pieces of history from England. Afterward we went for High tea at the Georgian restaurant in Harrods. Which BTW dad is NOT like having tea at Macy's. Its like RCC. I have pictures!

Well sorry this one is short but I promise I will write again tomorrow!

Story of the day:

While we were heading home from high tea at Harrods, all dressed up in our heels and dresses Melissa managed to get the heel of her shoe stuck in a grate and pull it up out of the ground. Did I mention we were in rush hour at the tube station?!... she scratched her ankle with the side of the grate and we had to put it back in the ground because it left a big gaping hole and we were afraid someone would fall in. That would have been a mess.












Yesterday we went to the museum of London and got to see TONS of artifacts from the beginning of London up until present day London. Amongst all of the wonderful things that we saw we actually got to see some medical instruments dating back to the beginning of time. We saw things like tweezers and these contraptions that they used to scrape dirt off their skin, to bedpans and syringes. One of the things that stood out most to me was a surgeon’s kit that was fully equipped with scalpels and a saw. Above the kit was a plaque that said that in that time people preferred their surgeons to have blood on their aprons because that showed that they had more experience.

When I first read that I laughed but then I was appalled. For me it is hard to believe that we as humans ever chose people that cut into us by which one had the most blood on them. To be quite honest I would think I would not want a lot of blood because I would not want to lose a lot of blood, but then again it was a different time and maybe they had not yet understood that losing all of your blood meant losing your life also. When I think about all of the things that were done in the medieval times, medicinal-wise, it tends to make me cringe knowing what we know now about medicine. All of the things that could have gone wrong: the infections, the blood loss, and just in general the improper hygiene of it all.

For those of you that know me I tend to like hand sanitizer and things like that even though I’m not the cleanest person when it comes to my bedroom and things like that. When it comes to my patients and me in the hospital I am obsessive compulsive about things like washing my hands and using clean linens and instruments so I cannot even imagine living back before the knowledge of how to sterilize instruments or the knowledge of the need.

For me, having recently had to choose a surgeon for myself, I can say that I did a lot of research seeing who was best in the field that I needed, who had the best record in the area, the best hospitals and so on. I can also guarantee that when I met him for the first time he did not have any blood on him!! I think that throughout time our ideas about medicine have changed and we with them. We have learned about sterile technique and have learned how to keep people from getting infections as easily. We also have come leaps and bounds in the field of surgery. While we still use saws in some ways, now we have lasers and nano-technology that has enabled us to do things that we could have never thought we would be able to do back in medieval times. I have never been surprised by what we are able to with medicine not only in technique but in actual medication that we never would have thought we would have been able to do.