Dr's Casebook: Some medical curiosities in old Edinburgh’s Surgeon’s Hall

Roderick's Examination at Surgeon's Hall, May 12, 1800. Artist Thomas Rowlandson, Joseph Constantine Stadler. (Photo by Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images)

I was at a medical conference in a snow-covered Edinburgh last weekend and took the opportunity to visit the Surgeon’s Hall Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. It is a fascinating museum with several interesting exhibitions on show.

Dr Keith Souter writes: A couple of weeks ago I wrote an article about Sherlock Holmes and his author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. As Doyle was an Edinburgh graduate it was no surprise to see an exhibition about Sherlock Holmes and Dr Joseph Bell. Doyle did in fact use his old teacher, Dr Bell as the model for the great detective. His skills in diagnosis gave Doyle the idea for Holmes’s art of deduction.

It may surprise you to learn that one of the kings of Scotland, King James IV (1473-1513) actually practiced both surgery and dentistry. There are records of fees charged by the royal household for tooth extractions performed by the king himself.

Another exhibition is called the Knox collection. This all relates to the work of Dr Robert Knox, who practiced surgery in the city and was the most famous anatomist in Scotland in the 1820s. His surgical work alone should have been enough to secure him a place in history, but he is more famous for his involvement in one of the most infamous serial murder cases in British criminal history.

This relates to the notorious body-snatchers William Burke and William Hare.

The collection contains some fascinating material including William Burke’s death mask and a leather pocketbook made from his tanned skin. He had been publicly executed, and then his body was publicly dissected by Professor John Monro in the university anatomy theatre.

Finally, there is a recreation of the old Surgeon’s Hall anatomy theatre, consisting of an amphitheatre of tiered benches overlooking a wooden table upon which lay a mannequin. A film of an actor dressed as an early anatomist describes the public dissection in 1702 of a criminal called David Myles. This was the first legal dissection in Great Britain, and it was carried out over a whole week, with a different anatomist dissecting each day. Projected images onto the figurine give a lurid impression of the dissection as the anatomy is revealed system by system.

A great museum for the student of medicine and surgery, although not for the faint-hearted.

Dr's Casebook: ​Some medical curiosities in old Edinburgh’s Surgeon’s Hall

Dr's Casebook: Some medical curiosities in old Edinburgh’s Surgeon’s Hall