Legend tells of a lost operating theatre

I want you to picture Raymond Russell in the mid 50s. He's of a medium-height, English, with a pair of rounded glasses and an impressive Doctorate in History. He's sitting in the Archives, probably at Kew - rows and rows of old information, books to ceilings, at a small table with papers spread out. He makes notes in a long scrawl that runs nearly off the edges of his spiral bound notebook. At least, that's how I like to picture him.

Legend tells of a lost operating theater - but quietly, only to those who take the time to listen. Dr Raymond Russell listens because he is researching the history of St Thomas' Hospital. When St Thomas relocated to Lambeth in 1862, all the entrances to whatever herb garrets and operating theaters for women it may have contained were blocked up. Time passed. The people who knew about it kicked the bucket - though papers, those very same papers Russell was poring over, kept its secrets.

Russell decided to investigate in St Thomas' Church, which still stood and had been part of the original hospital. He looked first to the ground, for a secret basement operating theater, and found nothing. He looked next to the high space above his head in the rafters of the church. One story tells that he climbed up into a space in the attic, stepping out into an old empty wooden space, dusty and dank, where some corners still held dusty dried herbs. Another says that he broke through the church wall into the theater itself, disturbing a century's worth of dust to rediscover what instantaneously became the UK's oldest known operating theater. Either way, all was completely dark - the skylight replaced long ago by slates and all other windows blacked over with smog and dirt.

Imagine Raymond Russell's torch going dramatically out as he came into the room, pulling out the matchbook he got from St George's pub, and lighting the space with long vague shadows that trembled under the thin weight of his breath on the flame.

Today the operating theater and the herb garret have been made into a marvelous, small and quirky museum. You can follow a set of tight winding stairs upwards to pay at the desk before one more (less winding) short journey to the entrance of the garret. You will discover an assortment of herbs and fragments of animal - and some recipes - reflecting medieval health care. There are displays showing some of the tools used in early surgery, which will fascinate you and make you very glad for advances in medicine and science. There are a few slivers of liver and a chunk of preserved human brain.

There are dried opium poppy heads, which the stories said were found in the rafters soon after Russell rediscovered the space, but where actually found by someone called in to do pest control in the 50s. As you might imagine, after a century of being left to their own devices, there was a thriving community of furry and scaly creatures up there. He discovered there were layers of floor boards - the doctors of old were no carpenters and, when old boards started to rot, they simply built over them - and discovered the poppy heads down underneath them. The museum knows this, because the man himself showed up a couple of years ago and identified the dried poppy heads (which he had varnished! Never varnish an archaeological find! Not even in the 50s). He was apparently quite delighted to see them there, and to see the space had been so well used.

And there is, of course, the operating theater itself. It dates from 1822, when part of the herb garret was converted to provide a space for women in need of surgery (or help producing babies, which looking at some of the implements they once used to "assist" this process was very akin to the surgery of the day). In the 1800s, your chances of surviving surgery (possibly childbirth) were 50% on a good day.

So now you need to imagine yourself in a small wooden room, lying on your back on a slab of wood. There is a skylight above you to let in natural light, and candles posted around the room to add a little more. Around you, rising up like a small amphitheater, are rows of benches. These are all occupied by curious and eager men wearing the garb of student doctors, toting whatever scrolls and notepads they took to such sterling opportunities to observe a master at work.

You are most likely tied down, especially if you have damaged a limb (they will either need to amputate this, or dis- then relocate it) or have some kind of internal trouble (they will need to open you up) or, well, anything really. You're tied down. But they've given you opium to help ease the pain you're currently experiencing, because it's about to get a helluva worse. On the table beside you are a variety of saws in different sizes, some scissors, a selection of knives with different edges, and a whole collection of instruments for grabbing and pulling and twisting. They are all incredibly sharp and all very silver and shiny. 

They don't stay shiny for long.