Madrid. The Olavide museum, dedicated to the history of dermatology, is about to be evacuated. Installed since 2016 in the basements of the Faculty of Medicine at Complutense University, the collection must be withdrawn within two months for economic and organizational reasons advanced by the establishment.
Composed of nearly 700 wax figures made at the end of the 19th century from real cases observed at the San Juan hospital in Dios, the collection testifies to a medical, scientific and artistic heritage of great rarity. The hospital treated poor people with skin diseases, the vast majority of prostitutes victims of sexually transmitted conditions such as syphilis.
The museum, which remained in precarious conditions for a long time, had been restored from the 2000s, before reopening to the public in 2016. For some time, only two employees, who arrived as volunteers, about twenty years ago, ensured the proper functioning of the collection. Their work, applauded by the entire scientific community, does not guarantee the future of the institution.
Several learned societies, including the Spanish Society for the History of Medicine, the European Society for the History of Dermatology and the European Academy of Medicine History have alerted the regional authorities to the risk of destruction or dispersion of this set. They recall that the collection is the responsibility of the Madrid community, as a legal heater of the former provincial hospital.
Despite the reception offers by other institutions such as Real Academia Nacional de Medicina, the future of the establishment remains uncertain. To date, the regional government has not communicated on a possible solution for the future.
A broader problem
The case of the Olavide museum is part of a broader context of fragility of institutions devoted to the history of science in Spain. Several projects carried out by actors in the medical and university sector are struggling to materialize, for lack of means or political will. The most emblematic remains that of the Cajal Museum, announced several times for more than ten years to pay tribute to the neurobiologist Santiago Ramón Y Cajal, Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1906.
Initially scheduled before May 2025, its opening was postponed Sine Die. No final location has yet been retained, although the former Faculty of Medicine of San Carlos, in the rue d’Atocha in Madrid, is regularly mentioned as an ideal candidate.
In this state building is still intact the amphitheater in which Cajal taught, but the lack of coordination between the institutions blocks, for the moment, any advance.
