Boosting Citizens' Awareness: The Anatomical Collections for Teaching Past and Present

Abstract

The challenge of eight museums of the University Museum System of the University of Siena for years has been that of annually offering to Siena schools a course of learning on the themes of science. The learning workshop is articulated in a frontal lesson, followed by a visit of the class in the proponent museum to better expound the chosen theme by the teacher. The fundamental role for such a didactic proposal is sustained by the conserved collections in the museum, used in the past to facilitate the university professor in their lessons, and that continue to show a strong didactic value helping the young student to “enter” in a captivating and easy manner into the world of science. In particular, the Anatomical Museum “L. Comparini” has now organized for some years a course of learning using historical instruments, models in terracotta and wax, plastinates, and tables that consent the operator to confront, with young children, the theme of the history of anatomy and the ways and means for research, formation, and the distribution of the anatomical sciences.