Jars and Jars.

Well I have been a racy dame for yesterday I headed up to The Big Smoke on a chuff chuff to meet fellow blogger Lovely Grey http://lovelygreyday.blogspot.co.uk/ for an Essex girls' day out.

Not up everyone's street certainly but of interest to both of us we met at the Hunterian Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Now this is not a place for the faint hearted or squeamish so I wouldn't recommend googling the images if body parts and other non human specimens in jars are not your taste.

The museum forms part of the Royal College of Surgeons and the collection was amassed by John Hunter [1728-1793]. Hunter was taught his anatomy skills by his brother and by 1760 he was serving as an army surgeon in Europe. From this experience he developed new ideas for the treatment of war wounds and common diseases such as VD. It was during this period that he began dissecting non human specimens and unusually, acknowledging the connection between different living beings.
Upon his return to England he set up his own practice and turned his burgeoning collection into a teaching museum. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society and after his death his work was purchased and donated to the Royal College of Surgeons by the government.

I found the museum absolutely fascinating. Some of the exhibits were very moving whilst others held a strange kind of beauty. Others made me inwardly gasp as I considered how much the patients must have suffered from their conditions when alive. Open Tuesday to Saturday it's free entry. More details can be found here....http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums/hunterian

LG and I did consider visiting the John Soane museum which is just across the way but the lure of a traditional hostelry [The Ship Tavern if you're passing] with jugs of ale and a chance to spend the afternoon nattering won the day. I had a ball!

Arilx