The Old Operating Theatre

Our Monday class--British Life and Culture--was themed around Shakespeare and Dickens this week, but it also included a visit to a very interesting place.  The place was the "Old Operating Theatre" of St. Thomas hospital.  The hospital was a charity hospital directly connected to the St. Thomas church on the south side of the river Thames.  During the 1800s, they built an operating theatre in the top of the church--where there was a lot of natural light from a skylight.  The operations done there were done in the age before anesthetics and antiseptics.

We got to see a demonstration of how the operations were done (here's Andrew, one of our students, about to lose a leg), and a description of how fast: since there were no anesthetics, speed was of the essence.  A good doctor could amputate a leg in less than 30 seconds--yikes.  The med students would stand in the theatre to watch and learn.



This is the only operating theatre of its kind in England.  Others were upgraded as the hospitals developed new techniques--especially in terms of cleanliness.  St. Thomas was overrun by the local railroads, though, and stopped being a working hospital.  The operating theatre was boarded up and forgotten for decades--before being found during some work on the church.  So we get to see a bit of history because no one was trying to push this particular theatre into the late 19th century.

The theatre seen from above.  Wood operating table, only the natural light