At the new Thackray Medical Museum in Beckett Street, Leeds, opening at Easter, children will be able to analyse the contents of a polluted street water pump, and walk down an 1840s street and see how open sewers, butchers and filthy kitchens kept disease rife. Or they can “catch” a disease such as cholera and find out how to cure it.
Other displays include a Victorian operating theatre, and examples of hip replacements and instruments produced by the Thackray medical instrument company, founded in 1902. Visitors will also see how medicine has developed through technology from leech tubes to keyhole surgery and laser treatments.
Key stage 2 packs on the Victorians have been produced by teacher Stephen Burt. They include: Houses and homes in a Victorian town; Accidents, beatings and full bladders: life in the mills and factories; and Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and the Crimean War. They cost Pounds 6.95 plus postage. Details: Ann-Christine Lloyd, Tel: 0113 244 4343.
