Museum of the History of Medicine, Paris

The Museum of the History of Medicine hides behind a grand, carved wooden door on the second floor of the University of Paris Descartes. Its collection centers on a terrifying and fascinating display of surgical instruments from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Among them sits the original saw used during the amputation of the leg of Marshal Davout, an officer under Napoleon. The glass cases hold these relics of survival, keeping them in the same room where medical students still study today.