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| The Hunterian Museum |
I was heading into my last two days here. Looking back through my photographs, I realized just how much I had seen and done in the last 33 days! Wow. But I wasn’t done yet. I had spoken to my mom a few days before and she insisted I visit the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons before I came home. Apparently, she told me, when my father was training for his FRCS (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons) he would come to the Hunterian Museum and my mother would quiz him on the specimens displayed.
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| The 'Irish Giant' |
As I had gone to another medical museum, The Wellcome Collection two days after I got here, going to the Hunterian Museum seemed fitting two days before I left, symmetry.The Hunterian Museum is on the top floor of the Royal College of Surgeons on Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Housed within this museum are over 3,000 specimens of formaldehyde prepared, curated, and preserved animal and human body parts. The central hall, the Crystal Room, is a two-story floor to ceiling display of glass containing bones, organs, teeth, guts, eyeballs, you name it. This place was amazing!
There was the skeleton of the tallest man who ever lived, Charles Byrne, the ‘Irish Giant’ as well as that of the shortest woman who ever lived, a skeleton of a Dodo bird, of extinct animals and insects and numerous shelves of skulls and bones.
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| Poor guy. |
This scientific mausoleum of memento mori held specimens of hands and feet covered in small pox, syphilitic skulls, TB infected bones, tumors of all kinds and drawers and drawers of pathological specimens.
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| Dodo bird skeleton |
The precision and detail of some of the anatomical dissections, especially the ones showing intact nerves, such as the Evelyn tables, was incredible. The museum showcased various dissection and preservation techniques since the 1700’s. Upstairs they had a section on modern advancements in surgery including a heart-lung bypass machine, a laproscopic surgical machine and videos on actual coronary bypass, brain tumor removal and arthroscopic surgeries. This place would have been a house of horrors had it not been for the fact that all of it was archived in the name of science.
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| Siamese twin skulls |
To think, some of the human specimens were over 300 years old! Unfortunately photography was not allowed (ahem) so I wasn’t able to archive my own collection of specimens, but I did manage to get a few sneaky pics in.' I was glad I took my mom up on her advice and came to the Hunterian Museum. It was fascinating spending the afternoon with 3,000 dead and preserved body parts.
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| Syphilitic skulls |
As I headed down back to Holborn Station on yet another sunny day in London, I bought some fruit off a street vendor.
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| An entire pig epididymis- dissected! |
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| Look, big foot! |
Munching on grapes as I cut through the park, I was happy to be a live specimen in this wild and wonderful world.
I was heading into my last two days here. Looking back through my photographs, I realized just how much I had seen and done in the last 33 days! Wow. But I wasn’t done yet. I had spoken to my mom a few days before and she insisted I visit the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons before I came home. Apparently, she told me, when my father was training for his FRCS (Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons) he would come to the Hunterian Museum and my mother would quiz him on the specimens displayed. 
As I had gone to another medical museum, The Wellcome Collection two days after I got here, going to the Hunterian Museum seemed fitting two days before I left, symmetry.
As I headed down back to Holborn Station on yet another sunny day in London, I bought some fruit off a street vendor.
I actually enjoyed reading through this posting.Many thanks.
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