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Hunterian Museum
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Free entry - booking recommended

Tuesday to Saturday: 10am – 5pm

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Museum gallery with dark grey walls. In the foreground there is a table with a projection of an anatomical drawing of a skeleton. On the back wall there is a large museum case containing four large rectangular orange/brown wooden boards, displayed upright side by side. Human tissue - nerves, blood vessels and veins - have been dissected away from the rest of the body and pasted onto the boards, and form dark outlines on the wood. On the right another museum case contains a bust, a skeleton and two oil paintings of skulls alongside other objects.
Hunterian Museum Galleries

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Surgery and Anatomy – From Ancient Times to the 1700s

Surgery has been practiced throughout the world for thousands of years. This area charts how surgical treatments and anatomical knowledge have developed over centuries.

This space displays the Evelyn Tables, made from real human tissue. Anatomists carefully dissected blood vessels and nerves from bodies and pasted the tissue onto wooden boards. Dating from the 1640s, they are the oldest surviving anatomical preparations of their kind.
Two ivory figures, female and male, lying on faded pink fabric beds. Their abdomens have been removed to reveal the anatomy below.

Female and male human anatomical figures, 1600s

A museum case containing four large rectangular orange/brown wooden boards, displayed upright side by side. Human tissue - nerves, blood vessels and veins - have been dissected away from the rest of the body and pasted onto the boards, and form dark outlines on the wood.

Evelyn Tables, 1640s

A museum display in tiers, separated by rails. In the foreground a museum case contains a bust, a skeleton and two oil paintings of skulls alongside other objects.