Once again- many thanks for the photos toots!
Here are pictures from the Herb Garret and Old Operating Theatre Museum at Guy's Hospital. It was built in 1822 after Keats' death so was not the one he knew, but a similar room. It was in use until 1865 and predates antiseptics although anaesthesia in experimental form was used from the 1840s onwards. The theatre was used for operations on female patients from the surgical ward in a building next door which now houses a post office.
What has happened to the one from John's time, do you know? This one from 1822, I imagine would be (in what it has in it) almost the same. I'm very interested in medical history- did you know that mesmerism was used as an anaesthetic at one point? The first chemical anesthetic, I believe was chloroform, then after that ether. Of course, in China they had acupuncture and in the ancient times there were narcotic herbs but dangerous! like henbane. I read that at first in the Victorian era they were suspicious of pain relief during surgery, and thought that pain wasn't a bad thing for the patient...

The coats hanging in the corner near the top are the frock coats worn by the acting surgeons. They were never washed, it seems, and would have been 'stinking with dried blood and pus' according to the museum's label. A dirty coat was almost a badge of honour.
Yuck!!! I don't know how they could have stood the smell and been proud of it. No wonder our poet wanted to leave the profession.

The box of sawdust was used to catch the blood dripping off the table. When it became a 'bloody porridge' and unable to absorb more liquid, a cry would go up for 'more sawdust!'. It was just like a butcher's shop.
Many a medical student must have threw up or fainted..not to mention the patients. I wonder how the sensitive John Keats could have stood watching that sawing of limbs going on...it must have affected him.Those knives look scary.

There were quite a number of medical instruments on display including a 'cervical dilator' the shape and size of a large kitchen whisk.
Ewwwwwww...

Here is a board devoted to Keats with a sample timetable of lectures he would have attended and an extract from a letter in which Keats describes his daily routine as a medical student which was not all that different from a pre-clinical student's schedule of today with lectures in the morning, practical work and private study in the afternoon and evening and a fair bit of socialising as well.
Is that the actual letter he wrote? Who was it to?
Really interesting thread and photos toots! Whilst I am a big fan of herbal medicine ( herbal medicine is curing the eczema folks...something the doctors could not do for me....) I'm glad for anaesthetics...I had one earlier this year and actually found it rather pleasant...you get oxygen now as the needle of anaesthetic is going in, so you don't wake up all groggy . And you go unconsious so quick these days without a heavy feeling first.