About International Museum of Surgical Science

When the International Museum of Surgical Science first opened on September 9, 1954, one of its first exhibits—the Hall of Immortals—displayed 12 stone statues of prominent figures in the fields of medicine and allied sciences. Though the rest of the museum’s four floors of exhibits have vastly expanded since its inception, the non-profit still stands for the very thing the Hall of Immortals celebrates: surgical advancements from around the world. The museum—located at a City of Chicago Landmark historic building—traces that evolution with a collection of more than 7,000 century-spanning artifacts, including prehistoric Peruvian trephined skulls, artificial limbs from the 19th-century, a working iron lung, and original X-rays taken by radiology pioneer Emil Grubbé.

Along with the Museum's commissioned oil paintings and an original cast of Napoleon's death mask, the Museum exhibits medically themed contemporary art through its Anatomy in the Gallery program.