Please respect the human remains displayed and do not post close ups of them on social media. Please be aware the anatomical specimens are displayed in the Museum, including human fetuses.
So warns the pamphlet for the Hunterian Museum. A few brief lines down the pamphlet encourages visitors to drop by for a bite to eat at the café before or after your visit.
The café was empty when we visited but the museum was busy. The collection of John Hunter’s specimens was squeezed into a few rooms branching off a corridor on the ground floor of the Royal College of Surgeons.
Jars of creatures lined the corridor, held in death pose by threads. The jars had calligraphic labels: Rana temporaria, Seyllium, Torpedo, Triton, Bufo etc. Many of the creatures had the skin covering their entrails removed. The corridor was crowded and warm and was filled with an unnerving smell. Apparently the specimens are generally suspended in a solution of formaldhyde. The whole scene quickly became too much and we moved more and more swiftly.
Then we came across the humans in jars. Next to other creatures, in the same black rimmed jars, labelled Homo. The children in the jars looked tranquil. And unnaturally white. I thought with dread of the texture of their skin had we been able to touch them. How cold they would feel. We thought grimly about the process Hunter had to go through to acquire these children.
As we stood there, I worked out where on the shelf of fetuses it was no longer permissible under the King’s laws to end the pregnancy and with it kill the human. It was an alarming way down the list. It all felt alarming. I have no strong opinion on the ethics of abortion, beyond a general sense of distate for it, but to see the jar containing a protected child next to another suggested the rules are arbitrary. An attempt to draw a dark line in ink through a matter that is quite grey.
I thought how odd it was that Hunter was a respectable man. How respectable all these weirdos were, jarring up dead things. Cutting things open. Perhaps a sensible outlet for societies psychopaths. At least they’ll acquire some knowledge in the process from which the public might benefit.
What disturbed me most were the children in the museum. The living children wandering around with their parents. I overheard a few conversations which suggested the child was being prepared by their parent for a life in the medical profession. Perhaps this sort of thing is a neccessary way to begin such a career. I realized that I could not ever be a doctor and it made more suspicious of the kind of people able to do it.
We left the museum and headed north of Lincoln’s Inn fields to eat lunch with a weak appetite.
September, 2023