Medical museum

The day stated off a bit foggy, but turned into a lovely blue sky day. The wind was a bit chilly though coming from the north.

Well with sammies made and thermos filled it was time to walk down tot the station and catch the train to Victoria, then on to Holborn via Bank. Today we were visiting the Hunterian Museum. The Man probably wasn’t that interested in some of the medical stuff, dissected body parts and bones. He did though like the displays of prosthetic joints.  The museum is part of the Royal College of Surgeons.  Hunter was a lowly surgeon as opposed to a physician and back then in the 1700’s the latter were considered to be the ‘real’ doctors. A carry over from this is that today’s specialists go from being a doctor to a mister.  Hunter’s eclectic collection of anatomical specimens and medical equipment and paintings spans four centuries.

The displayed specimens are all more than 20 years old so are able to be on public display, new specimens are not.  Hunter was a brilliant thinker and among the experiments he did was to transplant a human tooth onto the head of a chicken to see if it would ‘take.’ It did not, but undeterred he went on to successfully transplant a leg spur from a fowl onto the head of another.

In another display was a very ancient form of condom, made from pig intestine. The major killer back in the 1700’s was syphilis. It presented in many form from blindness to bones disintegrating. One of the favoured treatments was mercury, both in its liquid form and as a vapour.  Our guide said told us that the saying was that the victim spen ta night with Venus and the rest of his life with mercury.

I was particularly taken with a series of specimens of human foetuses. Ranging in age from just a few weeks, to full term. It was incredibly poignant to think that these were once a living thing.  They would only have been collected as stillbirths or from corpses.  Unacceptable as it might seem to us today this was the way that future doctors learned about the human form and the way that it functions. It was also considered to be something of an honour to be displayed by Hunter. So much so that when a woman delivered a very early set of  quins, some of whom survived only for  short time she willingly gave them to Hunter. 

http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/history