Address:
República de Brasil #33 street corner to República de Venezuela street
Neighborhood: Centro Historico
Phone: +52 (55) 5623-3123
Website: http://pem.facmed.unam.mx
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Opens its doors to the 1st North-South Conference on Degrowth-Descrecimiento, Mexico City 2018, offering its spaces for debate and reflection.
Located in the Historical Downtown, in the street of Republica de Brasil No. 33, the current Palace of the School of Medicine, offers a wide variety of rooms, collections and Library that protect the history of Medicine in Mexico.
The building was built between 1732 and 1736 by Pedro de Arrieta, who also worked in other significant buildings of the city, such as the Metropolitan Cathedral and the Church of La Profesa. Arrieta, died shortly after finishing the Palace of the Inquisition. Arrieta originally built a two-story building, with a third floor added in the nineteenth century.
In 1838, after the end of the Inquisition, the building was acquired by the archbishopric. In 1854, it was sold to the School of Medicine, which would convert it into the "School of Medicine and Nursing of the National University" (nowadays UNAM).
When all the faculties of the UNAM, including the Faculty of Medicine, moved to Ciudad Universitaria in the 1950's, the Palace was in a bad state, so restoration work began, ending in 1980. In 1982, the building that was once the prison was reintegrated into the main complex and has since been used as a theater and hall to accommodate the lectures of visiting professors.
The building still belongs to the UNAM and accommodates the Dr. Nicolas Leon Library, the Department of History and Philosophy of Medicine, the historical archive of the Faculty of Medicine of the UNAM and the Museum of Mexican Medicine. This museum was inaugurated on December 22, 1980, and was designed to preserve the history of medicine in Mexico, as well as the promotion of the values associated with this field.
The museum has 24 rooms that cover the history of the country's medicine from pre-Hispanic times to the twentieth century. Among its collections there is a room devoted to indigenous herbal medicine, several rooms dedicated to old medical equipment and machines, a room on human development and a collection of wax figures used for the teaching of disease pathology.
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