Health

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health is a “state of complete physical, mental and social well-being.” This means that even wheelchair users are considered to be healthy, despite their limited mobility, if they have no other medical conditions. In contrast, people who suffer from depression, for example, may be physically intact but not healthy. The options available today are many and varied. It is therefore all the more important to choose the right treatment. After all, every person is unique – and that applies just as much to their personality as it does to their health. How pharmaceuticals and medical technology have been helping us to get healthy and stay healthy for centuries can be seen and experienced in this exhibition from head to toe.

“From head to toe” is to be taken literally here: Beginning with the areas of teeth, eyes and ears, it goes through the cardiovascular system to the limbs and joints. To be more precise, the human being is unmistakably at the center of attention: a gigantic body fills the room with a walk-in head, an airy rib cage, with hand and leg silhouettes on the floor and an approximately five-meter-high foot. The journey through anatomy is flanked by the areas of looking into the body, attack of germs, intervention on humans, looking at the body and finally leads to pharmacy. Whereby you can slip into the role of a doctor yourself in many places in the body and on the superstructures along the walls. All younger explorers are taken along by owl Milla on a separate children’s track.

“Unique is the focus on today’s possibilities of medical technology and pharmacy in the service of mankind. The Corona pandemic has shown how important health research is, but also how powerful. Of course, our exhibition also includes unique historical originals, such as Robert Koch’s first incubator, which he used to discover the causative agent of tuberculosis,” says Florian Breitsameter, the exhibition’s curator. And he invites all visitors “for a change of perspective, to become active themselves – and, for example, to risk a look into the human eye, to control a modern prosthetic hand or to try your hand at a surgical suture. On our media wall, you can even become part of our exhibition yourself for the duration of your visit!”

Facts and figures:
Location: Level 3
Exhibition area: 800 sqm
Objects: approx. 1070
Demos and interactives: approx. 24
Diroama: 1
Media stations: 38

Highlight: The incubator of Robert Koch
Robert Koch’s incubator from 1881 may not be a particularly beautiful or glamorous object, but it is an invaluable contemporary document: the first device for growing bacteria in a controlled, warm environment marks the beginning of modern microbiological research.