To get yourself checked for a common cold, you would go to a Dr...... But to get a benign tumor removed or an organ transplant would you go to a Mr./Ms......??? Well you would in the UK. The Royal College of Surgeons (RCS), nestled in central London by Lincoln's Inn Field does not offer a doctor's degree. In fact, a fellow of the RCS gives up his elitist Dr. prefix for a more unassuming Mr./Ms. Odd, do you think? Well this 'giving up' of prefix doesn't seem all that odd when one looks at the history of surgery. Medieval English surgery was a forte of, not doctors, but barbers. Yes, barbers! The members of the Company of Barbers were popular practitioners and much in demand especially for looking after soldiers, what with the constant battles happening. Before a scene of amputation and unnecessary gore fills your vision, note that these barber surgeons were well respected and assumed the backing of royalty and aristocracy. The were the authority over anybody else on surgery. But in 1540, the Company of Barbers merged with the Fellowship of Surgeons to form the Company of Barber-Surgeons. This was when surgery and medicine were not yet considered sister disciplines, and surgery wasn't all scientific, but more like a shot in the dark. Our modern doctors learn a lot from the dissection carried out on corpses when they are still in medical school. But in those days dissection was a horror brought on to those who had committed heinous crimes - the reward of cruelty! The painting by the same name by William Hogarth given below depicts a public dissection in process under the supervision of a magistrate.
An example would be that of Jonathan Wild (1689-1725). Jonathan Wild was one of the most famous criminals of London. He was a policeman who ran a successful gang of thieves. Today he is viewed as a symbol of corruption and hypocrisy. After his public execution his body was buried. But later it was dug up and sent for dissection. His skeleton remains on display in the Hunterian Museum.
Thankfully, surgery and medicine did come closer. By the 1800's these two associations split, and the surgeons got their authority on surgery as well as offering the right to practice. This is when the RCS was founded, which is different from the Royal College of Physicians (RCP). The RCP insisted then that a surgeon must have a medical degree before entering the surgical profession. So every student of the RCS needed to get a doctor's degree first and then move to learn surgery, after which he/she drops the Dr. tag to snub the RCP. Interesting, isn't it! And as if the surgeons were being rewarded for immediately using their discoveries to cure patients, dissection to study the anatomy gradually stopped being considered symbolic for indignity. It was soon realised that study of anatomy in fact aids the medical field as well. But there was always a concern that if dissection be permitted by law, disciplining the anatomist might be a problem. There would always be a risk of impropriety with respect to handling towards the corpse. Hence, dissection still remained a social event, to be taken place in the presence of at least two surgeons and before a crowd of students. Thomas Rowlandson's painting 'The Dissecting Room' below gives a better understanding of how a dissecting room looked then.
Well, a lot of water has passed under the bridge since then. Dissections have become more sophisticated using various advance instruments. Dissecting rooms look nothing like the sweltering hole they used to be and corpses are treated with much more dignity than they were (I want to believe so, at least). Two whole centuries have passed since surgery was accepted as being a science at par with medicine, in fact requiring more skill than a doctor's. And it is as though history itself comes alive at the Hunterian Museum in the Royal College of Surgeons, London that houses a massive collection of species dissected for the purpose for anatomical study. But before we proceed, a little more on John Hunter, himself, after whom the museum is named.
John Hunter (1728-1793), after which the Museum's name goes, learnt surgery under his older brother William Hunter. His experiments and observation in scientific surgery has made him one of the most distinguished surgeons of his day. His knowledge mainly came from his thorough understanding of anatomy, which in turn came from the skilful dissection and careful study over years. He was appointed surgeon to King George III and went on to become the Surgeon General of the British Army. Hunter possessed a personal collection of hundreds of species of animals which he dissected at various stages in their development and preserved to develop one of the largest teaching museums. He also dissected and studied the human body to come up with some break through discoveries that form the basis of modern anatomical sciences. This collection was posthumously bought by the government and presented to the Company of Surgeons. It is today displayed in the Hunterian museum.
The Hunterian Museum, predominantly displaying the collection of John Hunter, also displays the collection of others like Richard Owen. The museum begins with the display of Evelyn Tables: fully dissected human nervous system, arteries and veins pasted on wooden tables. It isn't possible to only remove the separate system as such, so the only way this must have been done is by dissecting the body on the table and removing everything but the nervous system. I was amazed at the intensity of the nervous mesh inside our bodies! Another similar specimen was a cast of the arteries of a still born baby. The body was first injected with red colour plastic resin and the tissues were later removed to expose the resin cast that remained.
Anatomical artefacts of humans and animals of all ages and sexes adorn the museum glass showcase ranging from the mandible of a 98 year of woman whose teeth had naturally fallen to the mandible of a new born; from the skeleton of the 'Irish Giant' Charles' Byrne who was 7'7" tall to the skeleton of a 8 week old embryo which was as tall as the longest nail on my fingers; the preserved bodies of quintuples, 2 still born and 3 dead after only a few hours of life to that of foetuses in every stage of development to an embryo of 9 weeks wrapped in amnion and non-placental covers. Also on display were the cross sections of dissected and preserved human body part, including a complete range of dissections of the female womb at various stages in gestation. This was the first ever study in such detail of the entire gestation process that led to the break through in medicine helping women all over the world to survive child births. It is said that the Hunter brothers were responsible for the deliberate death of their patients in order to conduct this study. But no one could prove it, although it is proven that this study has helped save many lives than that were lost. Maybe that is why the investigations at that time did not come through.
Other artefacts are bottled dissections of all kinds of fauna: human, mummy, cat, dog, mouse, pig, cow, armadillo, porcupine, guinea pig, rodents, ewe, boar, chick, duck, rabbit, goose eggs, chicken eggs, ostrich, ostrich eggs, lizards, chameleon, queen termite, barnacle, butterflies, beetles, barnacle attached to whale skin, bats, sea squirts, giant clams, sea slug, crocodile, dog fish, hagfish, dolphin, beaver, woodpecker, honey bird, black skimmer, king eider, puffin, cuttlefish, rhesus monkey, chimpanzee, horse, kangaroo, toad, crayfish, torpedo, starfish, snake, salmon, gold fish, shark, sawfish, gecko, hornet, hornet's nest, wasps, honeycombs, solitaires, dodo, megalornis, mammoth skull, bison horns, huge antlers and so on.
A large section is devoted to the study of pathology. On display in this section was the skull of a 25 year old man suffering from hydrocephalus, a condition where the cerebrospinal fluid abnormally increases causing the skull to swell. This particular skull was at least three times the size of a normal adult human skull. A set of forceps, each designed to remove a particular tooth, showed the advances in dental science. A set of dentures made for Winston Churchill looked rather interesting. Also on display in the museum is the brain of the celebrated mathematician Charles Babbage. His brain was studied to uncover the secrets to a genius mind. I have no clue of any further findings. The skeletal remains of Eoanthopus or the Down Man, a missing link in the evolutionary tree in Europe, too, finds its way to this museum. Another very interesting and a bit eerie display is that of a cross section of a face of a child who succumbed to a tumour in the nasal cavity. On the front one can see half of the child's face. the other half is dissected and a mirror placed at the back reveals the tumour. A red dye is injected into the body that makes the tumour shine bright red. This distinguishes it from the other parts to make the study easier. But this red dye also makes the face of the child look life-like, like he is only sleeping. John Hunter joked about it saying, "I can give a dead man almost any look!"
The Hunterian Museum isn't a place for the light hearted to wander. But for someone with a keen interest in anatomy, pathology and evolution and with a curiosity that blazes one's mind, this museum is heaven! As an anthropologist I meant to visit this museum long ago. But now after visiting it once, I know I have seen nothing. The stomach of a seagull, the small intestine of a whale, the mandible of a pig and a cancerous human breast are only the beginnings. And as a lay man, I see along with remains of these mute animals the artery of a General, the brains of a genius, the bones of a Prime Minister, the bladder of a Vicar, the rectum of a Bishop and the femur of an Archbishop; and I think of another painting I saw in the museum - 'Vanitas' by Pieter Claesz.
Vanitas, or Vanity is a collection of motifs - a skull, an upturned glass, an unwound watch and an extinguished lamp - all depicting the inevitability of death, the perils of vanity and the transience of life. Not even the glory of the purple robed stands the shine of death's blue cape. Like the poem well etched in my mind:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against Fate;
Death lays his icy hand on Kings:
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
(From 'Death the Leveller' by James Shirley)
None of us are going to escape the clutches of the inevitable. But some, some like John Hunter have tried to lessen the perils, ease the pain and flourish our existence by their efforts. A part of the world knows. A part will find out. A part will know through this post. A part will know because you told them. But those who can, I would recommend, should visit this Museum to see the world itself turn inside out, literally.
(Note: All the pictures in this blog are from various internet resources. The museum wouldn't allow photography.)
