If you're from West Yorkshire you're probably familiar with Thackray Medical Museum and most likely you went there on a school trip at some point. When I was younger I went with school and with friends, and my Mum and I used to go together too. We would get the bus into the centre of Leeds and then walk across to the museum. I love this place!
Jonathan and I have had a few days off work so we decided to visit on Friday. It's fair to say I was pretty excited! I'm a massive geek when it comes to stuff like this, and my love for Thackray is on a par with Eden Camp.
The first bit scared me so much as a youngster and not much has changed. You step back in time to 1842 and work your way round streets, shops and houses from that era complete with the sights and smells from that time. It's absolutely mad how poor living conditions were and how low your chances of living a long/healthy life were, or even surviving past your 1st birthday!
At the start you pick a character and at the end you see if they survived their ailments. I picked wisely with my character living to the ripe old age of 70-something. Jonathan didn't fair so well. He got diphtheria and died aged 11! :(
The rest of the museum is full of medical instruments, medicines, machines, facts, hands-on activities and even a film of someone's leg being sawn off if that floats your boat. I even tried on an empathy belly and boy, that thing was heavy!
We spent a couple of hours there but could have easily spent much longer had we read everything along the way. There's so much information to take in and it's really fascinating to see how things were back in the day. Some of the treatments prescribed to people were mad!
If you live nearby and haven't visited it's definitely worth a trip. It was fairly quiet when we visited, with it being a week day. There were a couple of schools there (some cute little ones, and some not so cute older kids) and a few other couples but apart from that we had most sections to ourselves.
For £7.00 each we have a ticket valid for 1 year and with parking at just £1 I'd say it's a bargain of a day out. Plus you may learn a thing or two!
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