Erkrankungen des Blutes und der blutbildenden Organe

History and highlights of the teratological collection in theNarrenturm, Vienna (Austria)

“…The larger part of the extant collection finds its origin in the late 18th century when plans were made to create an entire new grand hospital to house up to 2000 patients (Hausner, 1998). German physician and hygienist Johann Peter Frank (1745Frank ( -1821 became director of this General Hospital and head of the medical clinic in 1795 (Frank, 1802). Frank took it upon himself to collect as many pathological specimens as possible and cooperated with municipal physician Pascal Joseph von Ferro (1753Ferro ( -1809 to achieve this goal.…”

“…One of the aims was to produce and preserve specimens from patients who had died of particularly interesting diseases. As instructed by Frank (1802), records of these clinical autopsies were written down meticulously with more than 500,000 documented cases from Vienna starting at 1817. Many of these reports concern dissections done at the new General Hospital of Vienna (Winter et al, 2013).…”