Founded around surgeon Pauls Stradiņš’s collection, this Riga museum explores medicine through instruments, books, models and other evidence. Its exhibitions also reveal how medical knowledge and the telling of its history have changed.
Guide preview
A museum collection can begin with a practical problem. According to the Pauls Stradiņš Museum of Medical History, students at Riga’s Second City Hospital were leaving cigarette ends on the corridor panelling. Surgeon Pauls Stradiņš placed portraits of medical figures and scenes from the history of medicine there to discourage the habit. Those pictures became part of a collection that eventually outgrew the corridor.
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UpgradeQuick facts
- Pauls Stradiņš gave his medical-history collection to the state in 1957.
- The museum opened to visitors in its present building in 1961.
- Its historic building was designed by Heinrich Karl Scheel and built in 1879.
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