A fine specimen
I am ashamed to say that today was my first trip to the Hunterian Museum in London. Despite working on eighteenth-century collections, being a historian of science, and having even attended a lecture in the building in the past, I had never been up the stairs to the museum. It both was and wasn’t what I was expecting.
Discussions with friends who have visited had led me to envision a wood-lined, gloomy space filled with gruesome specimens in jars, with little or no contemporary interpretation – Pitt Rivers Museum meets the Ministry of Magic from Harry Potter. What I found was a clear, bright space with rows of intriguing cases and jars, extensively labelled with excellent supporting material. Across two floors, the outer walls put the eighteenth-century surgeon John Hunter and his collection in context, from his era to the present day, discussing changes in surgery, medicine, collecting and the history of the collection itself. I had no idea that a large proportion of it was destroyed by bombing in WWII.
The double-sided central quadrangle of cases, called ‘The Crystal Gallery,’ which stretches up bridging the two floors, displays the vast specimen collection thematically according to the anatomy or pathology they exemplify. These pieces of flesh in jars of slightly yellowing liquid are surprisingly beautiful and show fascinating comparisons across species. Each specimen is briefly labelled. I felt that some of the language was a little too clinical in its attempt at brevity, and therefore left me unsure what I was looking at. But, I was quite happy enjoying the visual effect and the feel of the stacks of jars rising to the ceiling around me, all overlooked by busts of Hunter and Sir Joseph Banks at either end of the gallery. Separate small galleries deal with the paintings and surgical instruments that also form part of the collection. I would have liked to see these more integrated.
It is possible to get specimen ‘fatigue’ at the Hunterian due to the sheer volume of the collections. I did also feel that there was more contextual information than I could really assimilate – I will have to go back. But, overall I felt the museum struck a good balance between curious objects and modern explanation. A fine specimen of the historic collection brought bang up to date.