Kill or Cure: New State Library exhibition comes with a warning!

Opening this Saturday 30 July, Kill or Cure? A Taste of Medicine takes you behind the curtain of western medicine’s macabre history – from the knife-wielding barber-doctor to crackpot cures, mysteries of the wandering womb to blood-curdling surgical procedures pre-anaesthesia, and game-changing scientific experiments.

Wander the hospital-like corridors and into the exhibition’s 10 treatment rooms. Here, you’ll experience the dubious, dangerous and often deadly techniques used to diagnose and treat the sick and diseased from 15th to 19th century.

But first, ‘day patients’ are asked to take a seat in the waiting area where they are provided with a briefing on the four humours. The four humours underpinned all medical thinking from Ancient Greece through to the 19th century in leading a balanced, healthy life. If the body became sick or diseased, it was understood that their humours were out of balance (blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm). This often resulted in a visit to the barber-surgeon for some bloodletting or leeching!

Here’s a taste of what you’ll discover inside our treatment rooms:

• Phlebotomy:  Bloodletting for melancholy involved opening a haemorrhoidal vein!
• General medicine (herb room): Betony helped to treat a fear of the dark. 
• Obstetrics: Hear bemusing theories of how to conceive, virgin’s disease and mysteries of menstruation.
  
• Nutrition: See the weird remedies that were tried to fight scurvy. All that was needed was lemon!
• Sexual health: Peer through the Georgian-era peep holes for insights into the spread of syphilis.
• Operating theatre: Take a deep breath as the operating table ‘installation’ brings to life the trauma of surgery pre-anaesthesia.
• Pharmacy: Learn about DIY treatments, including how to diagnose yourself based on moles on your body.
• Research lab: Visit a greenhouse where Europeans hoped to grow medicinal plants from the ‘new world’ and cultivate wonder drugs.
• Infectious diseases:  Learn about the Plague and Smallpox. Cowpox was used as a vaccine to prevent Smallpox in 19th century.
• Mental health: An immersive space to sit and listen to case studies of patients of the past