The Indiana Medical History Museum

This is an unusual blog about an unusual museum.  On a recent visit to Indianapolis we visited the Indiana Medical History Museum.

So here’s the deal:  The Indiana Medical History Museum is what’s left of what was an Indiana insane asylum.  A note on the museum’s website states:

Young children and visitors sensitive to topics such as mental illness, death, and autopsy may find the museum disturbing. Human skeletons and preserved organs are on display at the museum.

All that is true.  I wouldn’t take kids here.  The Indiana insane asylum used to house 2,000 poor souls who had lost their minds.  The building we visited was the pathology center, all that’s left of the facility (the rest has been razed and replaced with condominiums).  You can’t just walk up and start visiting this museum; you have to book a tour and the tours only take a few people at a time.

The primary focus of this Indiana pathology department was research focused on unearthing the causes of insanity.   Our tour guide explained that back when the facility was an active insane asylum, a third of the patients were insane as a result of tertiary syphilis.  When it was discovered that this form of insanity was due to a microbe (the syphilis spirochete), further research focused on finding microbes that caused other forms of insanity (they didn’t find any).  The museum’s website states that it shows the beginnings of modern psychiatry.

The autopsy room and its equipment were interesting.  I tried to imagine what it must have been like to have been a doctor in the early 1900s working here.  Things sure have changed.

The library was interesting.  In its day, it was perhaps one of the most advanced on the planet.  It’s what they had to work with.

The building and our tour guide’s description of the place were somber and respectful.  Still, the tour had the feel of a Steven King novel.  Scattered equpment from the early days of treating mental illness filled the hallways.  Some of it was used for electroshock therapy.  Other tools were for lobotomies.   It’s what they had to work with back then.

Admission was a modest $10 ($9 if you are a senior citizen), and the tour takes about an hour or so.  I thought it was interesting.  It sure was different.

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