Plants and potions: Children’s workshop

Get hands-on with medical history, create your own pomander, explore the plants of the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) medicinal garden, and more in this creative half-term workshop.

The RCP and the Old Operating Theatre have combined forces to provide a fascinating and fun morning at the RCP’s home next to Regent’s Park. In this workshop, children will have the opportunity to learn about how medicine was practiced in the past from blood-letting and cupping to pomanders and potions. Children will explore the plants of the RCP medicinal garden, learn about past treatments, create their own pomanders and learn about medical practices with objects from our handling collections. 

The suggested age for attending children is 7–11 years but all are welcome. Children must be accompanied by an adult for the duration of the event but accompanying adults are free.

All materials and light refreshments will be provided.

The RCP medicinal garden contains over 1,100 plants with links to medicine. The myriad stories they tell come from diverse cultures, different countries and from every age in recorded history.

The Old Operating Theatre is the oldest surviving surgical theatre in Europe housed in the attic of the early 18th century church of the old St Thomas’ Hospital. The museum features the original timber framed Herb Garret once used to dry and store herbs for patients’ medicines and in 1822 an operating theatre was included.