Guy's Hospital Mini Museum

Bed bugs and blunderbusses, writers and robots, tanners, princesses and prostitutes. Not your usual list of hospital services and employees, but the Charity's new mini museum for Guy's Hospital resurrects and celebrates its chequered and innovative past with exhibits, photos and paintings.

Artefacts are themed around The Mysterious Mr Guy, Mr Guy's Southwark and Mr Guy's Hospital.

The Mysterious Mr Guy is Thomas Guy, bookseller, printer and publisher, who funded the original building in 1721. Land was leased for 999 years, but Guy died in 1724 before construction was completed. A bequest of one third of his estate ensured that the hospital opened and continues to serve patients today.

Concerned about 'the incurably ill and hopelessly insane' Guy, who turned down the post of Sheriff, a Knighthood and chance as Lord Mayor, was nonetheless praised for his Hospital for Incurables. Daniel Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe wrote that the new hospital was: "the charitable gift and single endowment of one person, and, perhaps, the greatest of its kind…that ever was founded in this nation by one person, whether private or publick, not excepting the kings themselves."

Mr Guy's Southwark explores the area's gritty past. The origin of Snowsfields as a name is revealed – tanned hides bleached in urine hung in rows that stretched like fields of snow – and visitors are reminded that Guy's is partly built on the site of The Tabard Inn where Chaucer’s pilgrims began their journey in The Canterbury Tales.

Set against a backdrop of brothels and gin drinking, Mr Guy's Hospital has also been home to eminent physicians and personalities.

• Obstetrician John Braxton Hicks gave his name to the pre-labour contractions he classified in 1872 and pathologist Thomas Hodgkin discovered Hodgkin’s Disease as well as bringing the stethoscope from Paris to the UK.
• More sensationally, physician William Gull, treated the Prince of Wales for typhoid in 1871 and was the first clinician to use the term 'anorexia nervosa'; he was also a prime suspect for Jack the Ripper.
• John Keats, the poet responsible for the immortal line ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ was a medical student at Guy’s from 1814. After qualifying as an apothecary in 1817 he lay down the lancet for the pen.
• Ethiopian Emperor Haile Salassi's daughter Princess Tsahai studied nursing at Guy's in 1938 following the Italian invasion of her country.

Other Guy’s Hospital firsts include:

• First hospital to use a robot to conduct a kidney transplant using the Da Vinci Robot in 2004 (funded with a grant of £1,000,000 from the Charity)
• First hospital to employ a fashion designer, Paul Costello, to design new uniforms in 2006

Axiom Design Partnership Ltd. researched and curated the exhibition. They installed secure, bullet proof display cases at the hospital and spent months interviewing long-term staff about changes over the years, sourcing historical artefacts and designing showcases.

The mini museum is in Guy's Atrium 1 and is open to all patients, their families and visitors.