Berlin Museum of Medical History of the Charité — Attraction in Berlin

As a visitor to Berlin, I visited more than a dozen museums. This medical museum, while not large, is rich in information and well-curated, making it worth a thorough visit (Unfortunately I missed the special exhibition on brains ending at last weekend). It offers valuable educational insights into the history of Charité (as well as generally the rise of public medical institutions), the development of medical techniques over the past three centuries, the life of Virchow, and the collection of pathological specimens. Personally, I particularly enjoyed the "At the Sickbed" section of the exhibition. It cleverly uses ten different case studies from various eras to showcase medical practices and their social and technical contexts through the patients' backgrounds, their "sickbeds," and related historical objects. This is something only a medical institution with a history as long as Charité's can achieve, and it provides an excellent display of medical history. It would be prefect if this section, like other high-quality publications from the museum, had an...

This museum has the potential to be so much better. I knew reviews mentioned a lack of English but it was a lot worse than I expected. The first and third floors have English, which covers the history of one doctor, the tools and practices used and the third floor covers various illnesses of people but the second floor, where all the organs are, doesn't have any translations whatsoever. This is where we spent most of our time.

There's so many organs on display and no translation whatsoever so we had no idea what we were looking at which is a real shame considering the rest of the museum has translations.

Most people say this isn't for the faint of heart which is true as you will see many organs with various diseases but it's worth mentioning there is also deformed babies on display as this may be difficult for some people to see.

Overall I highly recommend a visit here, it's by far one of the most interesting things you will see and it's definitely unique, it's just a shame we couldn't read more of what...

Virchow filled the museum with over 23,000 specimens before his death in 1902. The museum was closed to the public shortly after his passing but continued to be used as a teaching resource. During this time the collection continued to grow, but heavy damages sustained from WWII left only 1,800 specimens intact. The museum was reopened in 1998 in the same location but with a broader focus than the original and was renamed The Berlin Museum of Medical History.

Today, the museum covers 300 years of medical history and contains 10,000 specimens, some of which are from the original Virchow collection. Specimens on display come in varying levels of disturbing - from the mild arthritic knee to the truly grotesque fetal specimens which include rare congenital deformities such as sirenomelia and cyclopia. In addition to the pathological specimens, the museum also features an anatomical theatre and a historical ward, complete with iron lung and 19th century...