The Birth of Modern Medicine: Paris & Montpellier

Itinerary

• Day 1 - Arrive in Paris & 1st Talk

  Travelling by Eurostar from London to Paris, we will be met at the Gare du Nord and transferred to our hotel for the first four nights, in the heart of the city’s Left Bank. New Scientist writer Linda Geddes will give the first of three talks about the tour ahead and how it relates to the birth of modern medicine, before dinner at a local restaurant.

• Day 2 - Musée Curie & Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine

  This morning you will meet our expert local guide for a walking tour on the Left Bank, starting at the Musée Curie, a fascinating museum devoted to the history of radiation therapy. Continue to the Pantheon, the great mausoleum of the French great and good - including the lead-lined tomb of Marie Curie herself. After lunch you will visit the Musée d’Histoire de la Médecine, which houses an impressive collection of rare surgical instruments from the 18th century onwards including Rene Laennec’s first stethoscope.

• Day 3 - Musée des Arts et Métiers & Musée des Moulages

  We visit the Musée des Arts et Métiers in the Marais district, a former monastery which was converted into an academic institution during the revolution. It now houses a fascinating museum dedicated to science and technology, including exhibits on energy, communication, light and Foucault’s original Pendulum. You will also see the Musée des Moulages in the Hôpital Saint Louis which is generally not open to the public. Here you will see a specialist hospital built for dealing with epidemics and skin disease, which has a spectacular courtyard and bone-lined catacombs.

• Day 4 - Pasteur Institute and Museum & Musée Fragonard d’Alfort

  Visit the Pasteur Institute and Museum, named in honour of Louis Pasteur, before travelling to the astonishing Musée Fragonard d’Alfort. Founded in 1766 by the anatomist Honoré Fragonard, this museum is now part of the Veterinary School of Paris (one of the world’s oldest) and it has a unique collection, including a startling room of his original écorchés, mummified anatomical studies ranging from a dissection of a human arm used as a teaching tool, to the gruesomely theatrical Horseman of the Apocalypse.

• Day 5 - Musée Fabre in Montpellier

  We board the TGV for the journey south to Montpellier, on the Mediterranean coast. After checking in to our hotel just off the grand Place de la Comedie we shall discover the wonderful Musée Fabre this morning, with its remarkable collection of Greek ceramics and from the 17th until the 19th century.

• Day 6 - Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montpellier

  This morning we will visit the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Montpellier, the oldest continually-operating medical school in the world, and alma mater of François Rabelais and Nostradamus. Here we will see the wonderful library and the Conservatory of Anatomy where cases house jars, skulls and casts including a resin écorché model that stands in the centre of the room. The second floor of the conservatory houses the imposing collections of the Delmas-Orfila-Rouvière museum, consisting of écorchés and wax anatomical models from the last two centuries.

• Day 7 - Return to London

  After breakfast we will take the train back to Paris, where we will be transferred back to Gare du Nord for the Eurostar to London.