Why are museums important?
We’ve all visited a museum at some point in our lives, whether it was during a school field trip or with family on vacation. Approximately 850 million people visit American museums each year, but have you ever stopped to wonder how many people that museum impacted or why it came to be?
In 1683, the first museum (the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford) opened its doors and the rest is history. For centuries, museums have played an integral role in preserving the history of our society. Exhibits tell us stories about how our nation, our communities and our cultures came to be and without them, those stories could be forgotten.
Museums serve our communities in a multitude of ways, as we have seen firsthand. In Dayton alone, the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery holds a collection of over 1.8M objects important to not only our community, but to the world.
Our Mission
The progression and preservation of society depends on our museums. It is our mission to preserve the historical knowledge of natural medicine in our families, communities, and cultures.
When you visit the MUSEUM OF NATURAL MEDICINE, you’re leaving with a lifetime of memories, knowledge and a better understanding for the society and people that paved the way for life as we know it today. Natural Medicine is how generations before you healed themselves and their families. Natural Medicine is still the building blocks of today’s modern medicine research and standard of care.
“The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.”
— Thomas Edison
Academic Research and Museum Research
Academic Research
Behind the scenes, museums are conducting important research on the objects and artifacts in their collections. Not only do personnel at the museum conduct research, but museums may also partner with outside entities such as universities so that researchers, graduate students, and professors have the opportunity to utilize their collection.
The constant research occurring in museums can tell us a lot about the organisms and the time periods before we lived and walked on our city streets. The research may also tell us about how the world around us works, our health, or how the things around us came to be.
Museum Research
We are a museum of research. We take the information bound and confined on paper and bring that education and knowledge to life.
The MUSEUM OF NATURAL MEDICINE has what most classrooms may not: the materials and information that enrich and create an experience that is memorable through sight, sound, touch, smell, and energy.