PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — “Creating a City of Medicine” explores 100 years of Philadelphia’s medical history.<\/p>\n
“Kind of in cross-sections that allow you to see the contributions of a whole lot of different people and communities,” says Sara Ray, Ph.D., senior director of interpretation and engagement for the M\u00fctter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. “These are materials that are from the Civil War.”<\/p>\n
The M\u00fctter Museum is part of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, founded in 1787.<\/p>\n
Ray says the museum has “tremendous collections,” with items such as instrumentation, teaching models and old books on display.<\/p>\n
The exhibition starts in the formative years of the city with the devastating Yellow Fever epidemic.<\/p>\n
“That just slams into Philadelphia in the summer of 1793,” she says. “People didn’t really know what caused it.”<\/p>\n
The fallout was widespread. Ray says, “10% of the city died within a couple of months.”<\/p>\n
The outbreak tested both the city’s civic and medical strength, but some positives emerged. Ray says the Department of Public Health “kind of developed out of that moment.”<\/p>\n
‘The Medical Marketplace’ section explores how people received care in the early 19th century.<\/p>\n
“By and large, it was not the hospital, which were places of sort of death and poverty. Most people were receiving care at home,” she says.<\/p>\n
However, Philadelphia was turning into ‘A City of Medical Education.’<\/p>\n
“Tons of medical schools really cropped up over that first hundred years, as well as the clinical hospitals,” she says.<\/p>\n
The Civil War moved medicine forward out of necessity.<\/p>\n
“Produced things that, again, we just sort of take for granted today, like anesthesia,” she says. “As well as things like reconstructive surgery, neurology and prosthetics.”<\/p>\n
There is a very early example of a wooden prosthetic leg from the mid-1800s on view in the ‘Medicine in Wartime’ section.<\/p>\n
And finally, the discovery of germs as a cause of disease in the 1880s ushers in a sanitary revolution.<\/p>\n
Ray says the exhibition looks at how that really transformed how medical practices were done moving forward.<\/p>\n
“What we hope the exhibition does is really teach people a broader view of what medicine looks like, not just in the past, but today as well,” she says. “Creating a City of Medicine” is on view through next summer at the M\u00fctter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. Discounted admission is offered to medical, nursing and public health students. If you qualify, select the “College Student” level ticket and use the promo code MEDSTUDY250 for $15 off a timed admission ticket.<\/p>\n
“Creating a City of Medicine” \/
M\u00fctter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
19 S. 22nd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2026 WPVI-TV. All Rights Reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) — “Creating a City of Medicine” explores 100 years of Philadelphia’s medical history. “Kind of in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279987,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[117126,107706,26937,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-279986","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-117126","tag-6abc-loves-the-arts","tag-mutter-museum","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279986","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279986"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279986\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279987"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279986"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279986"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279986"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}