MUSME’s Virtual Doors
MUSME offers excellent guides!
Along the exhibition itinerary, visitors will knock on big virtual doors opening on human-size screens, where some leading figures of the past introduce themselves and the themes of each room:
“Knock knock” and the door opens up on a protagonist of Padua’s past Science who will introduce himself and the crucial themes of the room he is assigned, through an impressive dialogue with a contemporary character.
Room by room, door by door, the story-telling unravels rigorously and playfully, componing the grand tale of Padua’s Medical School.
Room A: Sibilia de’ Cetto and Giovanni Battista da Monte
Room B: Galileo Galilei
Room C: Andreas Vesalius
Room D: Santorio Santorio
Room E: Giovanni Battista Morgagni
Room F: Prospero Alpini
Sibilia de’ Cetto
“Baldo ed io, l’Ospedale l’abbiamo voluto libero da qualsiasi potere: autonomo dal vescovo di Padova, autonomo dalla Repubblica di Venezia, autonomo anche dall’Università! Per questo l’abbiamo costruito e finanziato interamente con i nostri fondi, senza chiedere nulla a nessuno.“
Giovanni Battista da Monte
“Universities were all about theory, the pure knowledge that we professors used to teach by reading and interpreting the books of the great masters of the past, first of all the Greek physician Galen. In the 16th century, combining theory and practice, and bringing doctors to the bedside of patients, was the real breakthrough for Universities. And our patients were right here, at the San Francesco Grande Hospital!”
Galileo Galilei
“Ah, Padua was the cradle of progress! A “new spirit” was beginning to pervade all universities, affecting not only logical and natural philosophers, but also doctors, physicists, mathematicians, astronomers…Padua opened its doors to students of all religions and from all over Europe, and there was academic freedom in our classrooms…It was quite out of the ordinary. “
Andrea Vesalio
“We absolutely needed to train doctors who knew how to put into practice the theoretical knowledge they learned at medical school. This is why dissecting tables became the crux of the medical experience: visu et tactu, i.e. observation and use of your hands… Experientia. That’s logical, isn’t it?”
Santorio Santorio
“I realised that measuring the functions of the human body was actually possible, and that these measurements could help us understand better how the body worked, as well as how and why people would get sick!But measuring instruments didn’t exist back then…We had to design them…build them…test them…”
Giovanni Battista Morgagni
“Since ancient times and until 1700 (before I came), pathology was based on the ancient “theory of the four humors”, developed by our dear Galen in the second century AD based on the theories of the father of medicine, Hippocrates .In a nutshell, it was believed that the human body was governed by four “humors” which determined human temperament: blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.”
Prospero Alpini
“In my day, in the 16th century, both common and exotic medicinal plants were grown in botanical gardens, also known as gardens of simples, to teach students what they were and how to identify them, classify them, use them…’Herbis, non verbis, fiunt medicamina vitae’ “
