Qualla: Siriraj Medical Museum

Siriraj Medical Museum: Introduction

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bobby from London, L'Angleterre, CC BY 2.0. The label on the glass case reads like a clinical note: cause of death, weapon type, angle of entry. Behind the glass, a skull confirms every detail. This is the Songkran Niyomsan Forensic Medicine Museum, one of seven small museums tucked inside the grounds of Siriraj Hospital on the west bank of Bangkok's Chao Phraya River. The complex is officially the Siriraj Medical Museum. Locals and guidebooks call it the Museum of Death. Both names are accurate, though neither quite captures the range of what these rooms contain -- a million-year-old skeleton, the nervous system of an entire human body dissected into a single specimen, parasites preserved in jars, and the forensic evidence collected from decades of Thai criminal cases.

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Image: Bobby from London, L'Angleterre | CC BY 2.0

Siriraj Medical Museum: A Hospital Born from Grief

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Heinrich Damm (User:Hdamm, Hdamm at de.wikipedia.org), CC BY 2.0. Siriraj Hospital, Thailand's oldest, was founded on 26 April 1888 by King Chulalongkorn, Rama V. He named it after his eighteen-month-old son, Prince Siriraj Kakudhabhand, who had died of dysentery the previous year. The king had seen cholera and other diseases sweep through his ...

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Image: Heinrich Damm (User:Hdamm, Hdamm at de.wikipedia.org) | CC BY 2.0

Siriraj Medical Museum: Bodies of Knowledge

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Athikhun.suw, CC0. The Congdon Anatomical Museum, established by Dr. Edgar Davidson Congdon, holds more than 2,000 organs arranged to teach the structure of the human body from conception through adulthood. The collection's masterpiece is a full-body dissection of the nervous and arterial systems b...

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Image: Athikhun.suw | CC0

Siriraj Medical Museum: Deep Time on the Riverbank

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Athikhun.suw, CC0. In 1960, anatomist and anthropologist Dr. Sood Sangvichien joined an excavation at Chorakhe Phueak in Kanchanaburi Province, one of Thailand's most significant prehistoric sites. He brought back tools, ornaments, and earthenware that had been buried alongside ancient skeletons, a...

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Image: Athikhun.suw | CC0

Siriraj Medical Museum: The Bogeyman in the Glass Case

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Athikhun.suw, CC BY-SA 4.0. For decades, the most visited exhibit in the Forensic Medicine Museum was not a specimen but a person. Si Ouey Sae Ung, born in 1927, emigrated from China to Thailand after the Second World War. Between 1954 and 1958, he was charged with the murder of seven children across multip...

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Image: Athikhun.suw | CC BY-SA 4.0

Siriraj Medical Museum: Teaching the Living

Fri, 06 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Athikhun.suw, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Siriraj Medical Museum is not a cabinet of curiosities, though it can feel like one. Its primary purpose remains education. Medical students rotate through these rooms as part of their training, studying pathology from preserved organs rather than textbook photographs. Recent...

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Image: Athikhun.suw | CC BY-SA 4.0