Museum of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine

A unique blend of traditional and modern architecture, the museum includes one ground floor and five upper floors that are home to 18 exhibition rooms.

You may see a delicately carved wooden pictures with different captions that illustrate different types of traditional medicine. This was a place where over a 50 skillful engravers have worked hard to complete these carved pictures for nearly 3 years.

The architecture of this museum shows the typical features of traditional architecture in different regions of Vietnam. It reflects many features of the Northern house in the basin of Red River, of the Hue style and some of the Cham ethnic minority group styles. In the Cham tower are exhibited some Linga - a ritual sculptures which represent a power, a diligence and a vital force in the Cham religion.

This museum is equipped with modern audio-visual technology, which regularly shows "A Century of Health Care Experiences" - a documentary film about the history of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine.

1st Floor

Room 1: The Historical Chronology of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine

The chronicle of Vietnamese traditional medicine has shown an important events and a remarkable people during its forming and developing process.

Room 2: The Altar of Medicine

This room dedicated to 2 greatest physicians in Vietnam: Tue Tinh (14th century) and Le Huu Trac (18th century).

Room 3: A Prehistoric Traditional Instruments

This room displays some items from Stone and Bronze Age that were used in traditional medicine.

Room 4: A Vietnamese Physicians

There are a 15 pictures of famous physicians and authors of Vietnamese traditional medicine from 13th – 18th centuries. These showpieces were created by vietnamese traditional handicraft ways, especially the painting on the yellow pergament paper.

Room 5: The Cham Tower

An architecture of museum shows an unique traditional architecture of vietnamese regions. There are house in the style of North, of Red River valley (a portal of temple),the Hue style (a balcony) and some styles of Cham people.

The other side of Cham tower looks like the gate of Thang Long which was built in Ha Noi in 1780. Its top has a 2 stone carved words “Medical Temple”.

Room 6: The Oriental Traditional Medicine

In this room we’ll introduce an oriental medicine along with a history of chinese medicine, a history of vietnamese traditional medicine and medicine in Korea.

Room 7: The Tree of Traditional Vietnamese Medicine

There is a wooden carved picture named “Viet Nam Bach Gia Y”. It shows a big tree with 100 royal physicians and vietnamese traditional medicine authors from XII to the early XX century.

Room 8: The Collection of Medical Ingredients

This room displays a medical trees, animals, minerals that were used in the traditional medicine. There also displays a collection of paintings “Vietnam Ban Thao” - it includes a 20 pages (1,2 meters high) and an images of nearly 300 medicine herbs.

Room 9: The Oriental Apothecary Instruments: knifes, boat mortars

This is a collection of tools for preparing of traditional medicine such as knifes and apothecary’s mortars. An apothecary’s mortar is a tool to grind a dried herbs into powder.
Every visitor can try to wear a doctors traditional clothes and take a photographs here.

Room 10: The Pharmacy House Model of XIX Century

In the corner of this room is situated the fullsize model of oriental pharmacy.

Room 11: The Collection of Wine Jars

This room shows some jars to keep medicine wine. Almost in all houses in countryside was made a wine in the past. A herbal wine was the one of main methods of medicine preparing.

Room 12: The Collection of Ceramic Teapots

This room is called “Tang Kham Khai”. There are some pictures describing traditional medicine operations such as picking, preparing medicines, feeling the pulse and writing a prescription. An exposition of this room shows an items such as bowls and teapots.

Room 13: The Collection of Scales and Mortars

This room shows an items from drug stores or usual life of vietnamese people such as mortars and pestles, scales and set of weights of 19th century.

Room 14: The Collection of Metal Teapots

This room shows some pots collecting from the whole Vietnam (from Ha Dong, Lai Thieu, Hoi An & etc.).

Room 15: The Collection of Tincture Jugs

This room displays some items in the collection of our museum such as small bottles of wine, wine jars, wine pots. Their styles and materials are much diversified with different dates from Han Viet pottery (1st-3rd century) to modern pottery (20th century).

Room 16: The Royal Medicinal Academy

This room is decorated according to the palace style of Royal physician academy. This academy took care of the King and the royal family.

Room 17: The Cinema Room

There is the cinema room with 50 seats. Here visitors could watch a 15 minutes documentary about the Vietnamese traditional medicine (in Vietnamese, English, German, French and Russian languages).

Room 18: The Pharmacy and Souvenir Shop

At the ground floor we have a souvenir shop. All visitors could try and buy a tea, wine and other medicine made from plants.