PHYSIOLOGY

Cadavers

Once a year all of the London medical schools hold a joint service at Southwark Cathedral to commemorate those people who have bequeathed their corpses to be dissected by medical students.

Location: Montague Close, London Bridge, SE1 9DA

The Hunterian Collection

The surgeon John Hunter collected physiological specimens. His home in Leicester Square had to be extended so that it could accommodate the artefacts. He requested in his will that the assemblage should be offered to the government for purchase. In 1799 the state made 15,000 available to buy it. The Collection was then passed on to the Company of Surgeons.

By the first half of the 20^thC The Royal College of Surgeon had the finest of physiological museum in the world. However, a large part of it was destroyed during the Second World War as the result of the building being struck by an aerial bomb.

The paintings in The Hunterian include three Stubbs and a Zoffany.

Location: 28 Leicester Square, WC2H 7LE (purple, red)

The Royal College of Surgeons, 35-43 Lincoln's Inn Fields, WC2A 3PE (orange, brown)

Website: http://www.rcseng.ac.uk/museums-and-archives/hunterianmuseum

Charles Byrne

There are Irish myths about giants - Giant's Causeway. Finn McCool created the Isle of Man during a quarrel with a Scottish giant, thereby creating the big Lough.

Jonathan Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels following a visit to County Tyrone.

Charles Byrne (1761-1783), a 7ft. 8in.-tall was a native of County Tyrone. In 1782 he, arrived in London. He became an exhibit. His health became poor and he died at the age of 22. He had made financial provision in his will for her corpse to be buried at sea so that anatomists would be unable to dissect his corpse. Corpse taken towards the sea; Hunter's men got Burn's pall got the pallbearers drunk and swapped the corpse for stones. Hunter paid 130 for it. He boiled it down and hid the bones.

In 1909 the American neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing opened up a giant's skull and so became the first person to appreciate that gigantism was the result of an abnormal pituitary gland.

In 2011 M rta Korbonits, a Professor of Endocrinology at Bart s, realised that one of her patients had a mutation in his A.I.P. gene. He was from Northern Ireland. She recalled that Byrne had also come from the region. The museum allowed her to extract a sample of D.N.A.. It was revealed that he also had had the A.I.P. gene. She was able to genealogical link him to living people who had gigantism. She identified the mutation in four Northern Irish family.

Location: St Bartholomew's Hospital, West Smithfield, EC1A 7BE

Sir Richard Owen

In 2010 an article was published that William Hunter and William Smellie had probably been guilty of having their corpses burked (i.e. murdered in order that their corpses could be used for anatomical purposes). It posited that it was improbable that there should have been a sufficient supply of corpses of women who were nine months pregnant for the two physicians to have been able to carry out their studies. It argued that Hunter had used his brother John as an accomplice and Smellie had used Dr Colin Mackenzie. There was an initial phase of burking over 1749-55. The pair had become aware that they were in danger of being exposed and therefore had held back. There had been a second phase over 1764-74. In total 35-40 women and their unborn children were murdered.

Yeti Finger

The Royal College of Surgeons had an item in its possession that was labelled Yeti's finger . D.N.A. analysis revealed it to be human.

David Backhouse 2024