New museum for alternative medicine opens

The latest of the University of Copenhagen’s museums is a treasure chamber of herbs, glow-in-the-dark bugs and cultural curiosities

by Sune Engel Rasmussen, English version by Sebastian Zieler

It is a journey in the footsteps of scientists, who through the centuries have gathered research materials from indigenous people from across the world. It is also an exhibition of future remedies like wormwood, poisonous carrot, cinchona bark and Mediterranean umbellifers which may be able to cure prostate cancer.

Culture tales

The small museum is enough to keep any plant-nerd occupied for hours, and for the rest of us to satisfy our culture-voyeurism and be fascinated with rainforest Indians that ate luminous bugs to increase their potency, and coated their arrowheads in nature’s own poisons.

»With the Museum of Alternative Medicine opening, the University of Copenhagen gets a beautiful little museum with research, stories and objects from the treasure chamber of nature.« says Sven Frøkjær, Dean of the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences.

The museum is at Jagtvej 160 and is the latest of U of C’s university museums to open, joining the Botanical Gardens, Zoological Museum and the Medical Museion.

ser@adm.ku.dk

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