[8] The museum's origins can be traced to Great George Street, Leeds, where Charles Thackray opened a small family-run chemist shop in 1902.

Before the redevelopment, highlights included Leeds 1842: Life in Victorian Leeds, Pain, Pus and Blood, describing the history of surgery and pain relief, Having a Baby focusing on developments in safety for childbirth and The LifeZone!, an interactive children's gallery, looking at how the human body works, with a smaller room for the under-fives.

[16] While the museum was closed due to the pandemic, it hosted an online exhibition in collaboration with the University of Huddersfield on Mothers in Lockdown.

Disease Street recreates the sights, sounds and smells of a slum in Victorian Leeds, following the stories of the inhabitants and the health issues that they would face.

The Victorian Operating Theatre tells the story of surgery in the age before antiseptics and anaesthetics, featuring a film of "Hannah Dyson's Ordeal": recreating the amputation of a mill girl's leg.

[21] Fragile Microbiomes (2024) was a solo show for bioartist Anna Dumitriu, blending contemporary art and microbiology to explore the history of infectious disease[22] and "delve into the intricacies of the microbial world.

The exhibition You Choose (2024) arose from a collaboration with medical humanities researchers at the University of Leeds on the LivingBodiesObjects project.

Highlights include Prince Albert's personal medicine chest[27] and an expressionist sampler sewn by workhouse inmate Lorina Bulwer.

Visited by 20,000 school students each year the museum delivers a series of in-classroom work and education resources, loans boxes and teacher events.

[30] The museum offers a medicine and history public lecture series on Saturday mornings which runs from October to March each year.