Instruments

Permanent exhibition

About the collection

The instrument collection contains tools from all the subdomains of medicine, from tourniquets to cystoscopes. These holdings are complemented by numerous other objects such as moulages, votive gifts, death masks and more.

Just under 2,500 objects, with an emphasis on the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries, are held in the display cases and storage crates of this collection. A particularly valuable part of it is the collection known as the Instrumentarium Chirurgicum Viennense, which was started in the 1770s by Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla, the first director of the “Joseph Academy of Medical Surgery”, in collaboration with the Viennese instrument-maker Malliard.

These instruments, arranged according to therapeutic approach in 56 red leather boxes and with detailed descriptions, served both to support the training of surgeons in the Josephinum and as a model for standardized manufacture throughout the territory of the Habsburg Monarchy.

Microscope by Theodor Billroth

around 1885

Billroth uses the microscope to view microorganisms and tissue samples. He can thus prove that the so-called wound fever is based on an infection caused by contact with bacteria.

Sphygmograph

around 1900

is a sphygmomanometer that mechanically transmits the pulse rate of the aorta to a lever arm and records it on a piece of paper.

Kinesisscope

Prague, around 1860

after Purkyne.

Obstetric phantom

around 1900

Design probably after Ludwig Knapp.

X-ray tube

around 1900

With inclined anti-cathode and osmosis regulation (Müller tube).