"Medicus - The power of knowledge"

The special exhibition used the literary approach to convey the complex and fascinating development of medical progress in a captivating way. It spanned the period from antiquity to the present day and showed how ancient knowledge travelled via Rome and Byzantium to the Arab world and returned to Europe in the 11th century, where it encountered the world of monastic medicine. Visitors met medieval healers and modern doctors. They learnt about the medical knowledge of the ancient world and gained an insight into the scientific research of the future.

In the footsteps of the Medicus, the exhibition set out in search of medical knowledge from a wide variety of times and cultures, bringing together evidence of very different origins from more than 5,000 years in an exhibition context for the first time.

With reference to the coronavirus pandemic, the exhibition was expanded during the first lockdown, which led to the first of three museum closures on 14 March 2020, to include eleven stations on the current situation surrounding the coronavirus.