Hours: Monday to Thursday from 10:00am-4:00pm
Location: The D.B. Weldon Library, WL 140, Western University, 1151 Richmond St, London, Ontario, N6A 3K7
Contact: (519)-661-4046 x84046; archives.services@uwo.ca
Access: Open to the public. Non-Western students may obtain Guest Access at any Western Libraries Service Desk with valid photo ID.
Website: https://www.lib.uwo.ca/archives/
The Archives and Research Collections Centre at the University of Western Ontario features several large collections, including the History of Medicine Collection.
The University of Western Ontario has a strong tradition in the history of medicine, from its inclusion of medical history in the curriculum to the founding of various medical historical groups in the late 1910s and 1920s. Professors J.W. Crane (1877-1959), Murray Barr (1908-1995), and others conducted medical history research and supported a medical school archives and museum. In 1974, the Jason A. Hannah Chair in the History of Medicine was established at the University of Western Ontario, funded by the Associated Medical Services, Inc.
The University of Western Ontario is home to the Medical Artifact Collection, which originated in the early 1920s when Western’s Faculty of Medicine began collecting the medical artifacts of their students, alumni, and doctors. The collection amassed approximately 1200 medical objects from the 19th and 20th centuries. Consisting of sixty-four boxes, the holdings reflect western Ontario’s rich medical history with objects from various medical disciplines, photographs, personal effects, and personal papers, including an original letter signed by Charles Darwin. Other objects of interest include: bloodletting instruments, surgical sets, microscopes, and pharmaceuticals. The collection found a permanent and curated home in 1972 when Western opened their Medical Museum in the newly built University Hospital. The Museum included two exhibit areas: a recreated Victorian doctor’s office and several cabinet displays with drug chests, stethoscopes, electrotherapeutic machines, doctor’s bags, wooden legs, trephines, scalpels, anesthetic masks, X-ray tubes, and obstetrical instruments.
The Medical Museum was closed in 1994 and the collection was divided between three London locations: Fanshawe Pioneer Village, the Victoria Hospital Museum and Archives, and the Department of History of Medicine at the University of Western Ontario.