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The Moisio Hospital Museum is located in the Moisio Hospital. Moisio is
approximately 6 km from downtown Mikkeli. The museum has at its disposal the
former living and social quarters of the hospital’s kitchen stuff located in
the classical hospital building designed by Architect Axel Mörne. The Hospital
Museum is owned and run by the Hospital District of Southern Savo. The
hospital’s former employees volunteer to staff the museum and give tours. The
Museum was opened when Moisio Hospital turned 60 in 1987.
The Museum provides a diverse and interesting point of view about the history
of psychiatric treatment and the special community of Moisio Hospital.
Psychiatric hospitals were closed off and separated from the rest of society
for a long time. Both patients and staff lived on the hospital grounds, where
outsiders had no business being. Just by existing, the Moisio Hospital Museum
already reveals something about the transformation of hospital institutions:
this museum, which is open to the public, is located on hospital grounds.
The exhibition talks about psychiatric treatment and its methods as well as
about life in the hospital community. The exhibition rooms have been decorated
to reflect patient rooms, nurse work areas and treatment rooms, and the
canteen, too. Many handicrafts made by the patients are on display. Work was
used as a form of treatment. The handicrafts and furniture created at the
hospital was sold and the proceeds helped the hospital financially, as well.
There is a coffeeshop at the hospital. Right next to the hospital is the road
Porrassalmen museotie, alongside which there is a monument to the battle of
Porrassalmi (13 June 1789).
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