Due to the Covid-19 situation, it is not possible to use the archive for research purposes for the time being.

For enquiries of all kinds, our team is at your disposal – either by telephone or email.

The instrument collection includes items from every discipline of medicine, and covers everything from tourniquets to cystoscopes. It also contains various other objects, such as moulages, votive offerings, death masks etc.

This collection holds just short of 2,500 objects, on display or in storage, principally from the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. Of particular importance is the so-called Instrumentarium Chirurgicum Viennense, developed from the 1770s onwards by Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla, the first director of the Medico-Surgical Joseph’s Academy, in collaboration with Joseph Malliard, a Viennese instrument maker.

These instruments, arranged by therapeutic approach in over 30 red leather caskets, and their detailed descriptions, served both to train aspiring surgeons in the Josephinum, and as a model for standardised production for use throughout the Habsburg realm.

The instrument collection is catalogued via a handwritten index and filing cards.

josephinum_archiv@meduniwien.ac.at
+43 1 40160 26001