The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons

The Hunterian Museum, named after the 18th century anatomist and surgeon John Hunter, is perhaps one of the most disconcerting places to visit in London, and as such is not recommended for the squeamish. It lies inside the grand Royal College of Surgeons which takes up most of the south side of Lincoln's Inn Fields, a typical London square bursting with interest. Open from 10 am to 5 pm Tuesdays to Saturdays, it is free to enter. Simply collect a visitor's pass from the front desk, walk up the staircase along which portraits of past Fellows of the College stare out, and enter the lower level of the museum.

Most immediately striking is the sheer quantity of specimens on display. Brightly illuminated glass cabinets are full to bursting with jars containing bits and pieces of every creature imaginable. From the tongue of a chameleon to the large intestine of a whale, the specimens are both fascinating and repulsive. Apart from those few examples where the entire animal is contained within its formaldehyde tomb, it is almost impossible without hunting out the label to guess the organism from which the sample came.

Around the edge of the room are displays which detail the history of both the College and of the science of anatomy in general. These are illustrated by both its human samples and by the tools that were used to obtain them. A particularly interesting exhibit shows large wooden dissecting boards with a different section of the nervous system on each. Less easily stomached are the examples of diseased body parts, showing starkly how things in the body can go horribly wrong. Other curiosities worth singling out are the towering skeleton of Charles Byrne, a so-called 'Irish Giant' whose body was collected by Hunter contrary to his wishes, and the pickled brain of the father of computing, Charles Babbage.

Picture by Paul Dean

For some light relief, head to the far end of the museum where a small collection of paintings are hung. These are not the kind of pictures that would normally be found in an art gallery, not due to lack of merit but rather due to the unusual subject matter. They depict people or animals which would have been highly novel at the time of painting: a rhinoceros hangs close to a portrait of a native American; a hugely obese man looks across at a noble with dwarfism.

Upstairs the exhibitions are more informative and less nausea-inducing. Here the story of surgery is dealt with, moving from Joseph Lister's groundbreaking discovery of antiseptics to bang-up-to-date methods such as keyhole surgery. It is staggering how much practices have evolved and improved over the past hundred years or so. I left the museum feeling slightly freaked out, but also very glad that I was born now rather than in the times when barber-surgeons considered a filthy, blood spattered apron to be a badge of honour.

The photograph on the top left of this post shows the skeleton of a hydrocephalus sufferer.