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When Medical Teaching Models Become Uncanny

Mexico City's former medical school preserves wax bodies, organs and teaching models that blur the boundary between scientific instruction and sculpture.

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On this page

  • Inside the former School of Medicine
  • How wax models taught anatomy
  • Why medical objects can feel disturbing
Preview for When Medical Teaching Models Become Uncanny

Introduction

Mexico City’s former School of Medicine preserves one of the country’s most unusual scientific collections: lifelike anatomical wax models created to teach doctors long before X-rays, CT scanners and digital anatomy software existed. Displayed alongside preserved specimens, skeletons and historic medical instruments, these figures occupy an unsettling space between sculpture and science. They were never intended as works of horror or art for its own sake. Instead, they were precision teaching tools designed to make the human body visible when cadaver dissection was limited, difficult or impossible. Today they form one of the most distinctive medical-history collections in Mexico, revealing how nineteenth-century physicians learned anatomy through craftsmanship as much as through observation.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

Medical Oddities illustration 1

Inside the former School of Medicine

The former National School of Medicine occupies the imposing eighteenth-century Palace of the School of Medicine in the historic centre of Mexico City. The building itself has an unusual past, having originally served as the headquarters of the colonial Holy Office of the Inquisition before becoming home to Mexico’s principal medical school during the nineteenth century. Since 1980 it has operated as the Museum of Mexican Medicine, presenting the history of medical practice through specialised galleries rather than sensational displays.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

Visitors expecting a conventional medical museum instead encounter a series of collections that document how physicians were trained. Historic surgical instruments, pharmacy equipment, microscopes, preserved anatomical preparations and embryological specimens are displayed alongside the famous wax models. Rather than focusing on rare diseases for shock value, the galleries explain how generations of Mexican doctors understood anatomy, pathology and diagnosis before modern imaging transformed medical education.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

The museum’s atmosphere comes as much from context as from individual objects. Walking through rooms once used for medical instruction while surrounded by carefully modelled human organs and diseases creates an experience that feels both scholarly and uncanny, particularly because many of the objects remain remarkably realistic despite being more than a century old.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

Art, Anatomy and History at the University of Bologna

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How wax models taught anatomy

Before reliable preservation techniques and widespread access to cadavers, anatomy presented a practical problem. Human bodies decomposed quickly, dissection opportunities were limited and repeated handling damaged delicate structures. Anatomical wax solved many of these difficulties by allowing artists and anatomists to create durable, highly detailed representations that could be examined repeatedly by successive generations of students. This teaching tradition first flourished in Europe during the eighteenth century before spreading to medical schools elsewhere.[repositorio.unam.mx]repositorio.unam.mxOpen source on unam.mx.

The Museum of Mexican Medicine preserves an important collection commissioned in 1873 by physician Leopoldo Río de la Loza and produced by the French modeller Raymond Vasseur Tramond. Many of these pieces depict dermatological diseases and external injuries with extraordinary precision. Their purpose was not aesthetic display but accurate clinical observation, allowing students to study conditions that they might otherwise encounter only briefly in hospital wards.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

Creating these models demanded both anatomical expertise and artistic skill. Layers of coloured wax reproduced subtle variations in skin tone, inflammation, blood vessels and tissue damage. Unlike textbook illustrations, three-dimensional models preserved depth, texture and scale, making them especially valuable for teaching surgery and dermatology. Because they could be handled and examined repeatedly, they also offered a consistency impossible with human remains.[repositorio.unam.mx]repositorio.unam.mxOpen source on unam.mx.

The collection demonstrates how nineteenth-century medicine depended upon collaboration between physicians and specialist artists. Accuracy mattered as much as beauty, yet the finished works inevitably acquired an artistic quality because every muscle, lesion and facial expression had to be sculpted by hand.[repositorio.unam.mx]repositorio.unam.mxOpen source on unam.mx.

Medical Oddities illustration 2

Why medical objects can feel disturbing

Modern visitors often react emotionally to the wax figures even though they are not human remains. Several factors contribute to this response.

  • Extreme realism: Fine colouring, lifelike proportions and careful modelling make the figures resemble preserved bodies rather than sculptures.
  • Medical intimacy: Many models expose internal organs or depict visible disease in ways rarely encountered outside hospitals.
  • Historical context: Knowing that they were created from direct clinical observation gives them an authenticity absent from fictional anatomical displays.
  • The uncanny effect: The figures are recognisably human yet unmistakably artificial, producing the psychological discomfort often associated with realistic dolls or mannequins.[repositorio.unam.mx]repositorio.unam.mxOpen source on unam.mx.

Unlike commercial “body horror” attractions, however, the museum deliberately frames these objects within medical history. Labels explain their educational role and place them alongside scientific instruments and documentary material, encouraging visitors to understand them as evidence of changing medical practice rather than curiosities alone.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

A Brief History of Art, Science, and Medicine

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A broader tradition of medical collections

The wax models form only one part of Mexico’s medical heritage. The museum also preserves embryological collections, anatomical preparations, pharmacy equipment and other teaching materials that illustrate how medical education evolved from the nineteenth century into the modern era. Together these collections show that anatomy was once learned through direct observation of carefully prepared physical objects rather than digital screens or virtual simulations.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

Although today’s UNAM Faculty of Medicine also maintains a modern Anatomy Museum with thousands of teaching models and specimens for education, the historic collections in the former School of Medicine remain distinctive because they preserve the original methods, materials and visual culture of earlier medical training. They allow visitors to trace the transition from handcrafted wax anatomy to contemporary medical education while appreciating the remarkable craftsmanship that once stood at the centre of scientific instruction.[Cultura]cultura.gob.mxCultura Museo de AnatomíaCultura Museo de Anatomía

Medical Oddities illustration 3

Why these collections matter within Mexico’s curiosity culture

Among Mexico’s unusual collections, the anatomical wax models stand apart because they were never assembled to shock the public. Their strange appearance is an unintended consequence of scientific accuracy. They illustrate how medical knowledge was communicated before photography, imaging technology and computer graphics, while also revealing the close relationship between science and visual art.

Within Mexico’s wider landscape of unusual museums—which includes naturally preserved bodies, death imagery and other macabre collections—the former School of Medicine offers a quieter but arguably more thought-provoking experience. Its galleries ask visitors to consider not only what the human body looks like, but also how societies have learned to study it, preserve it and transform it into objects of knowledge. The result is a museum where historical education and the uncanny remain inseparable.[UNAM Global]unamglobal.unam.mxGlobal Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humanoUNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024…Published: August 12, 2024

Prof. Stefano Ratti – Anatomie der Fragilität | Frankfurter Kunstverein

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Endnotes

1. Source: unamglobal.unam.mx
Title: Global Museo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano
Link:https://unamglobal.unam.mx/global_revista/museo-de-la-medicina-mexicana-un-espacio-dedicado-al-conocimiento-humano/

Source snippet

UNAM GlobalMuseo de la Medicina Mexicana: un espacio dedicado al conocimiento humano - UNAM GlobalAugust 12, 2024...

Published: August 12, 2024

2. Source: repositorio.unam.mx
Link:https://repositorio.unam.mx/contenidos/ficha/la-anatomia-humana-entre-la-ciencia-y-el-arte-la-coleccion-de-cera-anatomica-del-museo-de-anatomia-5041715?as=0&c=Mw16p5&d=false&i=30&q=derecho&t=search_0&v=1

3. Source: unamglobal.unam.mx
Title: mx Palacio de la Escuela de Medicina: un legado transformado
Link:https://unamglobal.unam.mx/global_revista/palacio-de-la-escuela-de-medicina-un-legado-transformado/

Source snippet

de la Escuela de Medicina: un legado transformado - UNAM GlobalMarch 11, 2024 — PALACIO DE LA ESCUELA DE MEDICINA: UN LEGADO TRANSFORMADO...

Published: March 11, 2024

4. Source: gaceta.facmed.unam.mx
Title: museo de la medicina mexicana un libro abierto y vivo 2
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5. Source: facmed.unam.mx
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Title: 31 Wax anatomical models collection Josephinum
Link:https://medicine.museum/collection/31-Wax-anatomical-models-collection-Josephinum

7. Source: pem.facmed.unam.mx
Link:https://pem.facmed.unam.mx/index.php/2020/10/05/historia-del-palacio/

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Title: el museo anatomico de la escuela nacional de medicina de mexico 1870 1910
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9. Source: unamenlinea.unam.mx
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10. Source: cultura.gob.mx
Title: Cultura Museo de Anatomía
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Link:https://lugares.inah.gob.mx/en/node/5904

Additional References

16. Source: scielo.org.mx
Title: Museo de la Medicina Mexicana
Link:https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?lng=es&nrm=iso&pid=S0026-17422023000200049&script=sci_arttext_plus&tlng=es

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Antecedentes históricos (1951-1982)May 12, 2023 — [https://doi.org/10.22201/fm.24484865e.2023.66.2.07](https://doi.org/10.22201/fm.24484865e.2023.66.2.07) CORRELACIONES HISTÓRICAS MUSEO DE LA...

Published: May 12, 2023

17. Source: scielo.org.mx
Title: Museo de la Medicina Mexicana
Link:https://www.scielo.org.mx/scielo.php?pid=S0026-17422023000200049&script=sci_arttext

Source snippet

Antecedentes históricos (1951-1982)May 12, 2023 — REVISTA DE LA FACULTAD DE MEDICINA (MÉXICO) VERSIÓN ON-LINE ISSN 2448-4865VERSIÓN IMPRE...

Published: May 12, 2023

18. Source: youtube.com
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCkeKwMPn50

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Prof. Stefano Ratti – Anatomie der Fragilität | Frankfurter Kunstverein...

19. Source: youtube.com
Title: Prof. Stefano Ratti – Anatomie der Fragilität | Frankfurter Kunstverein
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzim8a2xJX0

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Art, Anatomy and History at the University of Bologna...

20. Source: youtube.com
Title: Mexican Museum of Medicine: The Art of Healing
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBTiD5AZBmw

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Florentine Anatomical Museum: The human body studied by great physicians of the past...

21. Source: youtube.com
Title: Art, Anatomy and History at the University of Bologna
Link:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pTxUXEqqx98

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A Brief History of Art, Science, and Medicine...

22. Source: ucm.es
Link:https://www.ucm.es/english/museum-of-anatomy-javier-puerta

23. Source: waxmodelling.com
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Link:https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co77724

25. Source: collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk
Link:https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co77724/wax-anatomical-model-of-a-human-head