Museum of Vietnamese Traditional Medicine (FITO)

Vietnam's first museum of traditional medicine, built from 18th–19th-century northern wooden houses

The museum's owner used wooden houses from the Red River Delta dating from the 18th–19th centuries to build this place, so the moment you step in you meet the antique warmth of old timber and carving. It covers 600 m² over 5 floors and 16 exhibition rooms, in traditional Vietnamese architecture with many intricate motifs. It is the first traditional medicine museum in Vietnam, established under Decision No. 241/QD-SVHTT of 11 July 2022 by the Ho Chi Minh City Department of Culture and Sports. More than 3,000 artefacts here tell the story of how traditional medicine formed and developed, some dating back as far as 3,500 years. The museum also keeps and displays specimens of Vietnam's rare medicinal plants, animals and minerals. A few things are worth lingering over: 15 red-lacquered, gilded paintings of famous physicians and authors of Vietnamese traditional medicine from the 13th to the 19th century; a wood carving on a great tree bearing the names of 100 famous physicians from the 12th to the early 20th century; and the "Vietnamese Materia Medica" album of 12 pages, each 1.6 m tall, depicting nearly 2,000 medicinal plants. There are also landmark books on pharmacology, acupuncture, gynaecology, paediatrics, ophthalmology and health cultivation. There are plenty of everyday objects too: boat-shaped herb grinders, herb-cutting knives, pestles, mortars, jars, decoction pots, Vietnamese and Western scales, herb planes, and wooden boards and seals for printing prescriptions – collected from provinces all over. The museum also carefully recreates how healers and royal physicians examined and treated patients, weighed out and brewed medicines through the ages, along with the tools of the medicine trade such as scales, medicine cabinets, advertising boards, printing blocks, wine gourds, teapots, medicine bowls and lime pots. On the 3rd floor you can dress in traditional costume to play an old-time physician, take a pulse, weigh out herbs and take photos. The museum screens a documentary on the history of Vietnamese traditional medicine in Vietnamese, English, German, French and Russian. The ground-floor souvenir shop sells teas, wines, oils and traditional medicines – you can try before you buy.

English text: machine translation from the Localis platform — proper names kept in Vietnamese.