Everyone's a collector, even surgeons, especially Dr. Max Thorek. The instruments and artifacts he collected served as the seed for the galleries of the International Museum of Surgical Sciences and Hall of Immortals.

Over the years, other surgeons also sent their most prized finds to this place, expanding it to a 7,000-piece exhibit, including:

- a copy of Napoleon's death mask
- a bronze speculum found in Pompeii
- Florence Nightingale's nurse's cap
- a Chippendale wheelchair
- a working iron lung from the 1920s
- trepanned (drilled) Peruvian skulls
- ancient stone circumcision knives
- amputation kits and artificial limbs
- Aztec charms
- one of the world's first stethoscopes
- a full-sized apothecary shop
- the Adrian X-ray Shoe Fitter
and much, much more!

The most surprising part of this collection is not the instruments, but the art. You can find a rendering of the first ovarirectomy, with doctors removing a basketball-sized tumor; Dr. Dorry Pasha operating on a case of elephantiasis of the scrotum; a geisha having her arm removed by Dr. Pompe V. Meerdervoort; and Xavier Cugat's painting of an operating room where a surgeon reads Playboy and a dog waits for scraps.

The also have dozens of busts of famous surgeons, many carved by other doctors, demonstrating that you can be handy with both a scalpel AND a chisel!

This interesting, odd, dare I say bizarre museum is located at 1524 N. Lake Shore Drive, in Chicago, 60610-1607 (that's just north of the Mag Mile, a block north of North Avenue on inner Lake Shore Drive).

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10 am - 4 pm
Admission: Adults $5, Seniors $3, Kids $3