Dozens of scientific societies urge the Community of Madrid to stop the destruction of the Olavide Museum.

Two dozen scientific societies have requested the Community of Madrid to urgently prevent the “risk of destruction” of the Olavide Museum, a treasure of medical history that includes around 700 wax figures of real patients, originating from the now-defunct San Juan de Dios Hospital, which was located on Atocha street in Madrid in the late 19th century. The Complutense University of Madrid, which has showcased the collection since 2016, has unexpectedly ordered its eviction “for economic and organizational reasons” within two months.

The mistreatment of the wax figures aligns with the abuse these individuals suffered in life. The hospital cared for poor patients with horrendous skin diseases, particularly sexually transmitted infections like syphilis. The Olavide Museum is filled with lifelike figures of very young women forced into prostitution and disfigured by disease, during a time when antibiotics were unknown. The two dozen scientific societies emphasize that “given their origin, the fragility of the materials of the pieces, and the scientific and artistic scope, the collection has an incalculable economic value, placing it on par with those housed in the major anatomical museums in Europe,” such as the Hospital of Saint Louis in Paris and the Josephinum in Vienna.

The open letter, promoted by the Spanish Society of the History of Medicine, emphasizes that “the collection belongs to the Community of Madrid,” the heir of the Provincial Council, which owned the hospital on Atocha street in the 19th century. The journey of the figures since then has been incredible. The Olavide Museum―named after its founder, the Madrid dermatologist José Eugenio Olavide (1836-1901)―ended up boxed up in 1966 and revived in 2002 when a senior official from the Madrid Health Service requested the Forensic Anthropology Museum of Complutense to take over the wax pieces, which were in very poor condition. In 2005, the Spanish Academy of Dermatology and Venereology took custody of the collection, which has since moved through a storage facility in Torrejón de Ardoz, a future gym in Chamberí, and an old aerobics room in Leganés. In December 2016, the Complutense presented the reopening of the Olavide Museum as a significant event, in a space provided by the university in the basements of its Faculty of Medicine.

“We request the intervention of the competent authorities in order to avoid the risk of destruction or disappearance that closing and evicting this internationally renowned patrimonial set would entail,” warn the signing entities, among which are the European Society for the History of Dermatology and Venereology and the European Association for the History of Medicine and Health. “The professional societies and academies that sign this letter request immediate protection and the search for a solution for the current maintenance and full operation of the Olavide Museum,” they insist. The statement was signed on June 2, four days after Adolfo Kunjuk News revealed the decision of the Madrid university to oust the collection from its premises.

The curators David Aranda and Amaya Maruri began as volunteers restoring the wax figures in 2003 at the Complutense and are now the only two workers at the Olavide Museum. Together, they saved the pieces, and together they now have to box them up, unsure of their fate. “I feel a huge sense of injustice,” Aranda expresses. “None of us could have imagined that this would be boxed up again. It’s a feeling of frustration, injustice, anger, and sadness,” he adds. The driving force behind the museum’s revival, dermatologist Luis Conde Salazar, passed away two months ago at the age of 81.

One of the peculiarities of the collection is that the wax figures often have the patient’s medical history written on the back, with the initials of their first and last names. Amaya Maruri shows a face full of suppurating ulcers typical of syphilis and reads aloud its medical profile: “M. H., 26 years old, single, from La Coruña, a prostitute for two years, of delicate constitution, lymphatic temperament, irregular menstruation, admitted on August 17, 1879 […] Acquired several venereal disorders during her practice of prostitution.” The museum is filled with wax figures of young women like M. H., sexual slaves in late 19th-century Madrid. “Women, in that closed society, only had three life paths: caring for children and husbands, entering a convent, or prostitution,” laments Maruri.

The two dozen scientific societies applaud the work of Aranda and Maruri, who have dedicated half of their lives, since they were students, to saving the collection. “Thanks to the recovery and restoration work of the dermatological waxes carried out by the professionals at the Olavide Museum, the pieces are acclaimed by international experts,” highlights the statement.

Other institutions have also mobilized to rescue the collection. The Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain has offered its facilities to store and exhibit the wax figures, as explained by Antonio Campos, vice president of the institution based in Madrid, next to the Royal Palace. “It’s a pity the scant interest in this type of museum,” laments the academic, promoter of a project for a Spanish Medicine Museum that also struggles to get started. This newspaper asked a spokesperson from the Madrid Health Department on Tuesday if the government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso is aware that the Olavide Museum belongs to the Community of Madrid and if it has a plan to prevent the collection from ending up in a storage room, but has received no response as of now.

The director of the Basque Museum of the History of Medicine, Anton Erkoreka, has written to the rector of Complutense, Joaquín Goyache, asking him to keep the Olavide Museum in its current location, as it “is at serious risk of disappearing.” Erkoreka has also addressed the Minister of Science, Diana Morant, to request increased public funding for science and medicine history museums, which are suffocated by a lack of funds. The Basque director has reported to the minister “extreme and regrettable cases like the Cajal Museum,” which should have opened before May 31, 2025, to showcase the legacy of Nobel laureate Santiago Ramón y Cajal, as promised three years prior by Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. It doesn’t even have a venue yet.

An apparently perfect candidate to host the Cajal Museum is the monumental building of the former Faculty of Medicine in Madrid, also on Atocha street, in the museum axis of the capital. The large building is owned by the State: part belongs to the Ministry of Science and has been leased to the Medical College since 1970; the rest, occupied by the National Institute of Public Administration, belongs to the Ministry of Finance. There, the classroom where Cajal taught, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Medicine for demonstrating that the brain is organized into individual cells: neurons, remains intact.

The journal Medical Profession interviewed the last director of the San Juan de Dios Hospital, Luis Álvarez Lovell, in January 1974. The doctor explained that the Olavide Museum had been boxed up and was lost in some warehouse, but he requested it be rescued. “We thought it would be an ideal solution to install it in the old Faculty of Medicine of San Carlos, now refurbished as the headquarters of the Medical College of Madrid, and where I believe the Cajal museum is going to be placed,” he proposed. Half a century later, everything is strikingly similar.