St. Thomas's Church, London, Old Operating Theatre, Oil On Canvas By Jl Walton, 1960

This painting with British accents represents Saint-Thomas Church, located in the Southwark district of London. The painting is signed JL Walton lower left and bears the date 1960. At the back of the canvas is a label bearing the words JL Walton, Artist, Draftsman, 18 Alverton Street, London 5E8. It's winter, the trees have no more leaves and the sky is pale blue dotted with clouds. Characters animate the composition in the foreground in the street, but the pride of place is reserved for the graphic architecture of the red brick buildings and wrought iron gates, typical of the London city. St. Thomas Church was built at the end of the 17th century on the initiative of Sir Robert Clayton, former Mayor of the City of London, on the original site of the St. Thomas Hospital already mentioned in writings from the 13th century. It was in the herbalist's room located in the attic of Saint-Thomas Church that the first operating room in London, the oldest in Europe, was installed, and it is said that major surgical experiments were carried out there. took place at the time. Poor people who fell ill in the streets left their lives in the hands of the monks because they could not afford surgery, and the monks would experiment with them because they did not have much knowledge of medicine. Quite the opposite for patients who had money, who were usually operated on on their own kitchen table. The operations were carried out without anesthesia, so the monks gave alcohol or opium to their patients so that they felt as little pain as possible. We know that as early as the 19th century, medical students stood a few steps around the surgeon so as not to lose any detail of the operation. The operating room was organized like a theater with a work space around an operating table and benches arranged in a horseshoe all around on multiple tiered levels so that spectators and trainees could view the operations. In 1962, after 100 years of inactivity, the garret and operating theater were opened to the public as a museum of experimental surgery, The Old Operating Theatre, depicting all manner of operations such as amputations, trepanations, bleeding, all carried out without any notion of antiseptic.