Founded in 1835 by Mathieu Orfila, the Museum of Pathological Anatomy at the Paris Faculty of Medicine closed its doors on March 25, 2016. It was named in honor of French anatomist and surgeon Guillaume Dupuytren.
The museum contained no fewer than 6,000 objects related to anatomical pathologies, including skeletons, organs, and deformed fetuses preserved in jars. A very small section also featured animal remains.
Visitors could visit from Monday to Friday from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. for a fee of five euros.
Photography was prohibited.
The oldest piece in this realm of pathologies was the skeleton of a woman who donated her body to science in 1752. She suffered from osteomalacia. There was also a skull representing leontiasis ossea, more commonly known as lion face syndrome.
The “museum of horrors”
Nicknamed the “museum of horrors” for many years, it actually held very interesting historical and medical pieces and did not deserve this !
Unfortunately, it did not attract large crowds. I had the opportunity to visit it alone in 2013. The curator simply abandoned me there, leaving me to wander the aisles of corpses at my leisure for hours.
It felt eerily silent and grounding.
I took dozens of photos (shhh!) and left a part of myself there.
Aside from the interesting aspect of the visit, it is visceral.
It is difficult to remain unmoved when faced with a human face cut in half and preserved in formaldehyde to show a tumor. We know that he suffered. We know that the means available at the time were non-existent. We know that his sacrifice ultimately paved the way for modern medicine… but we cannot ignore the reality of a head in a jar.
The ghost of the Dupuytren museum : Paris’ lost sanctuary of pathologies
Dupuytren has been closed since 2016. Some pieces have been transferred to other museums or sold, while most of the museum’s collections have been moved to storage facilities at the Pierre and Marie Curie University of Science in Jussieu.
Access to the anatomical specimens is still possible, but only by special permission and upon request for researchers, teacher-researchers, and students in the field of medical sciences.
It is therefore no longer possible for tourists to visit.
Since it’s now a ‘forgotten’ place, here’s a glimpse of what once was the biggest collection of pathological anatomy specimens… (Don’t come at me for taking those pictures, you would’ve done the same !)
Warning : Graphic content moving forward, proceed with caution.
TikTok deleted my 111k views video of Dupuytren for being ‘too graphic’…
So I guess myluw is now one of the few places where you can still witness the secrets of this forgotten museum.
