Josephinum and the Anatomical Wax Models
Why is it significant?
Stop at the railings on the Währinger Straße and look across the courtyard at the long, calm, yellow and white palace with its columned centre. It looks like an aristocrat's home. In fact, it was built in 1785 as a school for army surgeons. Emperor Joseph the Second had a problem.
Key Facts
| Place | Josephinum and the Anatomical Wax Models |
|---|---|
| Address | Währinger Straße 25, 1090 Wien, Austria |
| Geo Coordinates | 48.21950, 16.35630 |
| Part of Walk | Couches, Wax and Radium: Freud's Vienna and the Medical Quarter of Alsergrund |
| Generated | Generated |
Stop at the railings on the Währinger Straße and look across the courtyard at the long, calm, yellow and white palace with its columned centre. It looks like an aristocrat's home. In fact, it was built in 1785 as a school for army surgeons.
Emperor Joseph the Second had a problem. His soldiers were treated by surgeons who had often been trained as barbers, men with saws and razors but little science. So he founded the Josephinum, the Medical-Surgical Academy, to give army surgeons an academic education. Its first director was his personal surgeon, Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla, and the building was designed by Isidor Canevale.
Then Joseph needed teaching material, and dead bodies were hard to keep. On a visit to Florence he had admired the anatomical wax figures made there, so he ordered a whole collection from the Florentine workshop. More than a thousand models were made, and the story goes that they crossed the Alps carried by mules. Inside, in their original rosewood and glass cases, you can still see them: a reclining woman opened to show her organs, nerves like threads of silk, the lymphatic system traced in silver.
They are beautiful and slightly unsettling, which is exactly what Joseph wanted. The Florentine work was supervised by the scientist Felice Fontana, and much of the modelling is credited to the sculptor Clemente Susini, whose hands could shape a vessel as fine as a hair. Students could study the body without the smell, the decay and the hurry of a dissection room, and a human figure could teach the same lesson for two centuries.
Today the Josephinum belongs to the Medical University of Vienna and, after a long renovation, it tells the story of Viennese medicine, from these waxes to the great doctors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Now cross into the Van-Swieten-Gasse and walk up towards the old hospital grounds. Behind the trees, a round tower is waiting, and it was built for the insane.