Photo: Benoît Prieur · CC0 · Wikimedia Commons

Musée d’histoire de la médecine et de la pharmacie de Lyon

University museum on the Rockefeller campus in Lyon, on the history of medicine and pharmacy: Mesmer’s baquet, Gall’s casts, objects related to the plague.

Ask the museum for opening hours

Website Directions

Musée d’histoire de la médecine et de la pharmacie de LyonAsk the museum for opening hours

Website

Limited operations. The university’s official page publishes no visiting hours, and the Lyon tourist office reports a temporary closure. Visitors are advised to contact the museum before coming.

About the museum

The museum was founded in 1896 by Alexandre Lacassagne, professor of forensic medicine at the mixed faculty of medicine and pharmacy in Lyon. It was first housed in the faculty on the Quai Claude Bernard, then moved in 1930 to the Rockefeller campus when the faculty relocated to the site. It is considered one of the very first museums of its kind, a status confirmed by a decree of 1914.

Its mission is to show how the principles of medicine and pharmacy evolved over the centuries and what means doctors and pharmacists had at their disposal. More than 7,000 objects are preserved. The collection includes a late 18th-century baquet of Mesmer, skulls and head casts that belonged to Joseph Gall, inventor of phrenology, Ligozzi’s painting “La Vanité”, objects related to the plague in Lyon, old pharmacy jars, medicine boxes, old laboratory equipment, and drawings by Raphaël Freida on prostheses for soldiers who had lost limbs in the Great War. The museum also has a library of old medical books, often printed in Lyon.