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Collection of Medical Technologies and Instruments

The study of the development of medical technologies — instruments, devices, prostheses and other implements — is one of the most exciting ways to decode the history of medicine. Some of these items have remained largely unchanged for 300 years, while others have transformed beyond recognition.

The Museum’s collection includes everything from ancient implements used by shamans and folk healers, to surgical instruments and electrotherapy machines, to artificial ventilation devices, stethoscopes, x-ray scanners, electrocardiographs, prostheses, eyeglasses, hearing aids, and many other items and appliances produced from the early 20th century till the 1970s.

Artificial circulation device. Design by Sergey Bryukhonenko. Moscow, 1936.

Trouvé device. France, early 20th century.

Microscope. Europe, late 18th century.

Phalloendoprostheses (male genital internal prostheses). Designer — Viktors Kalnbērzs. USSR, Riga, 1987. Polyethylene plastic.

Provita, a local darsonvalisation apparatus. Produced by V. Baumgartner in Basel, Switzerland, sold by V. Knecht in Riga. 1927.

Medical leech vessel. France, mid-18th century. Tin.

Set of surgical knives and instruments in a redwood case. England, London, mid-late 19th century.

Childbirth labour pain-mitigation apparatus. USSR, Krasnogvardeyets factory, 1959.

Glass body. Dresden. 1960s.

Condoms, Vulkan Sanex, 1930s.

Set of bronchoscopy instruments. East Germany, early 1950s.

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