The exhibition shows a selection of more than 200 pieces of the scientific and medical collection of the University of Valencia and also involves the presentation of a new exhibition space at the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, especially designed for research and teaching. Similarly, this exhibition complements the Scientific and medical collection of the University of Valencia, 1. Science and Society, opened in December 2012 at the Palau de Cerveró.

The public will be able to analyze the development of modern medicine, including for example, information relating to the cholera epidemic that hit Valencia in 1885 and the first mass vaccination for this bacterial disease carried out, in our city, by the Catalan doctor Jaume Ferran. The etching roadmap of cholera in Spain (1832) is pointed out and also the important materials relating to the stay of Santiago Ramón y Cajal in our city, as his manuscript notebook or several photographs taken by him. Among the instruments displayed, there are a portable X-ray equipment (19th c.), a cerebrotomy from the early twentieth century to make cuts in the brain, a dental chair with pedals or a showcase in which skulls are exposed.

This collection was born in the mid-seventies thanks to the work of the Professor José María López Piñero. The modest initial display consisted of the few objects and tools that could be collected from the Faculty of Medicine. It grew, over time, largely by altruistic donations from individuals and institutions.

The intention of Professor López Piñero when he created the collection, apart from safeguarding the heritage, was to equate us with the best European Institutes for the History of Medicine of that time. In almost all of them, the material and iconographic sources was taken very much into account, apart from the printed, archive, oral transmission and direct observation sources. Therefore, the initial idea in the moment of creating the collection was that it would serve for both teaching and research. In the present situation of deep crisis and change of values, many of these institutional collections, «exemplary in their time, are dead, about to die, or held below minimal levels », according to the curators of the exhibition. Hence the importance of the University of Valencia to bet on a different solution, opening to students, researchers and the general public the knowledge of their outstanding heritage.

The materials presented are intended, on the one hand, to show a selection of this scientific and medical heritage, and on the other hand to illustrate the major milestones of the Valencian Medicine and its Faulty of Medicine. Morphology and therapeutics have been the two major Valencian traditions. That is why the exhibition begins with the first one, which refers to the Vesalius movement in our city, to the Crisóstomo Martínez Atlas, and also to the work initiated by Gómez Alamá and the work of Santiago Ramón y Cajal in Valencia. The other great Valencian line of work, Darwinism and therapeutics, is displayed in the IHMC López Piñero.

On the other hand, surgery has also had a long tradition in Valencia that even dates back to the previous period to the University foundation. This shows how it was before and after the period called «Surgical Revolution». The way anesthesia, hemostasis, antisepsis and asepsis were penetrating in our environment is described. The exhibition continuous by analyzing the establishment of medical and surgical specialties: ophthalmology, obstetrics and gynecology, otolaryngology and urology. It also integrates odontostomatology. Finally, as a useful teaching section, a showcase about human evolution has been incorporated, analyzing thus, the most characteristic lesions of Paleopathology (study of diseases in ancient times through the bones).