"Then you pull it through here and keep stitching up. The handles are long because you don't want to put your fingers in all that blood."

Judith is demonstrating the use of a pair of stomach clamps to a small child and her grandparents, who all appear fascinated.

Gory details help to capture one's attention, says Judith, heritage learning consultant at Abbeydale Industrial Hamlet.

This week was the last of the Medicine Through The Ages learning days at the hamlet, a series of events over the holidays to tie in with the hamlet's history and the small exhibition of rather disturbing medical instruments on loan for the Thackray Museum in Leeds.

Every week children and their grandparents (and parents) have been learning about medical practice from the 1700s up to the present day.

The St John's Ambulance have been in to help and the grandparents themselves have shed light on the niceties of medicine of 50 or 60 years ago.

"We had a sputum mug, which was used for patients with TB to spit into. One lady who came in used to be a nurse and she was telling us how she'd have to take it away and weigh what the patients had produced," say Judith, with a grimace.

There was information on hallucinogenic plants and their use by witches. "We found one of these nearby," says Judith helpfully, without being too specific about the location of the Abbeydale Devil's Snare plants, as seen in exaggerated form in the Harry Potter films.

And for the keen medical historian there was plenty of information on Sheffield's early hospital, the Sheffield Dispensary, set up by wealthy philanthropists in the 1830s, and about Florence Nightingale's grandmother Mary Shore, who lived in Fulwood.

The summer activities were intended to tie in with the 60th anniversary of the NHS, says Judith.

But for the children at least it was the saws and clamps and forceps that had garnered the most interest. "Boys like amputations," observes Judith.

The medical trail was also popular: visitors were encouraged to go round the museum to carry out a risk assessment and work out which parts of the body were most in danger in each of the hamlet's working areas.

"Health and safety was a bit ad hoc in the past," says Judith. "They'd put sacking round their arms and legs to protect themselves from the heat in the crucible furnace and they'd drink beer to stop dehydration but they did it to protect themselves. It wasn't the employer's responsibility."

And in those days grinders didn't know about vibration white finger or asbestosis, not by name anyway. It was just the grinder's disease, says Judith.

The Hamlet activities are now winding down after the summer, although the café will still be open most weekends until October.

There's also a final family open day of the season on Sunday, October 5.

And Judith points out that the Hamlet's sister museum at Kelham Island will finally reopen after the floods late in October, with a preliminary Furnace Fun Day to promote a new Furnace Trail around the Kelham area on September 14.

Judith's colleague Kevin Bamford is enthusiastically helping another small child learn about internal organs.

"What does the large intestine do? Well…"

See www.simt.co.uk



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