The Old Operating Theatre, London
Britain’s oldest surviving operating theatre has been restored and opened
to the public, together with a museum of 19th-century surgical accessories
and a herb garret for the use of hospital apothecaries. The theatre, with
its tiers of seats for ghoulish spectators, is situated above a church,
and was once part of Guy’s and old St Thomas’s hospitals.
The blurb about the theatre extols its ‘atmospheric and romantic surroundings’.
This could depend a little on your taste, but the theatre does give a fascinating
insight into the medical practices of the first half of the last century.
The idea of creating a sterile environment for surgery was unknown before
the time of Joseph Lister, so the wooden operating table on which the patients
lay (or were held down) was seldom washed, and neither was anything else
in the room. There was, however, a jug of water and a wash basin on a stand.
These were for the surgeon to wash the blood off his hands after the operation,
rather than to clean them before.
Blood was quite a problem for the Victorian surgeon, in fact. A bucket
of sawdust was placed under the operating table to catch the blood as the
operation progressed, the surgeon kicking it every now and then to the place
where most of the drips were falling. And the floor, too, was covered in
sawdust, with an extra layer being added after complaints about blood seeping
through the floor and dropping onto the congregation in the church below.
In the 1860s, the Lister revolution meant that steps were at last taken
to sterilise the theatre and reduce the number of infections contracted
during surgery. In particular, the air around the operating table was regularly
sprayed with carbolic. This move must have been welcomed by patients, since
it greatly increased their chances of surviving an operation. It was less
popular with surgeons, though, since it gave them carboluria, a condition
which meant that their urine turned black.
The Old Operating Theatre, Museum and Herb Garret is at 9A St Thomas’s
Street, London SE1.