Musée Dupuytren

Update: As of March 2016, the Museum Dupuytren is closed. The collection will be moved to a different campus of the university, and is set to reopen in September 2016. The collection will be open to students and researchers by appointment only, with only occasional days open to the public. 

This collection of thousands of anatomical waxes, pathology and terratology specimens was almost lost to history.

The museum’s collection was started by French chemist and father of toxicology Mathieu Orfila in 1835, in an unused part of a convent. 102 years later, by 1937, the museum was broke and was forced to shut down. It sat neglected and rotting for the next 30 years before it was saved by Jacques Delarue in 1967.

While during those years a number of pieces were lost or destroyed, the museum still has an impressive collection of 17th and 18th century specimens. Of particular note are the the brains of aphasic patients, preserved in alcohol, and still used in brain function research.