In the age of Enlightenment the surgeon, no longer merely a barber, became the leading figure in the revival of surgery. In the same period the production of more refined instruments was undertaken, such as those of the extraordinary collection exhibited in this room by Giovanni Alessandro Brambilla (1728-1800), military surgeon and personal physician to the Emperor Giuseppe II. Throughout the eighteenth century the activity of training doctors, surgeons and obstetricians was intense. For this purpose, in Florence, refined anatomical models in wax and terracotta were produced. These models were utilized by professors in their lectures up to the beginning of the present century. Exhibited here are the wax figures (life-size) and obstetrical terracotta models (one-third smaller than life-size) illustrating changes in the uterus during pregnancy and the various stages of childbirth.

Some surgical instruments are now in the exhibition: