The University of Edinburgh has had several notable graduates—including luminaries such as Charles Darwin and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle—study under its school of medicine ever since the university began offering it in 1726. Part of the curriculum would have included access to the learning tools now collected in the school’s anatomy museum.
Though this current iteration wasn’t established until the mid-1950s, the more than 12,000 objects contained within the collection date back to the end of the 19th century. These include items and artworks pertaining to various fields of study, such as anthropology, forensics, pharmacology, and the pseudo-science of phrenology.
Noteworthy specialty items interspersed among the medical tools and diagrams include a model of the human lymphatic system that has been injected with mercury, dating back to the end of the 18th century; the skull belonging to the tutor of King James VI and I, George Buchanan; and the skeletal remains of William Burke, one half of the notorious serial-killer duo Burke and Hare.
