Fans of true crime and the macabre will enjoy a visit to one of Edinburgh's more peculiar museums.
Sorry, that should really read, fans of medical science and advancement, but in truth, the Surgeon's Hall Museum on Nicolson Street will appeal to all of the above and more, and as it's open seven days a week from 10 am until 5 pm there is no excuse really not to pop along.
Though Edinburgh has an abundance of wonderful museums, this one has to be on the most fascinating end of the scale, with one of the more eye-catching items being a book bound in the skin of one of the capital's most infamous serial killers. But more about that later.
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Split over four floors it is housed within the beautiful Surgeon's Hall across from the Festival Theatre, the museum is accessed from a beautiful courtyard with the gleaming glass-fronted entrance and atrium at odds with the sheer weight of history hidden behind its doors.
A repository of many of the exhibits and artefacts built up by the advances in medicine over the years, and dating back to the late 17th century, the museum is a monument to how important Edinburgh, and Scotland as a whole, was to the world of medical science.
After paying the £9 entrance fee (there are concessions for students and medical staff) we entered and found ourselves quickly perusing the current temporary exhibit on midwifery, a subject that we know will be intriguing to most.
Across the hall, you'll find the history of Surgery Museum and anatomy theatre where you'll discover exhibits dedicated to the advancement of humanity's understanding of the body and some very visceral displays of body parts such as early tools for surgery, genuine human body parts such as hearts displaying the stab wounds that killed them and an interactive display dedicated to the first ever public dissection of a human body in 1702, where executed convict David Myles was dissected over 7 days by a host of some the top surgeons of the time.
You'll also discover the story of author Arthur Conan Doyle's inspiration for Sherlock Holmes, Dr Joseph Bell, and other incredible tales such as that of Robert Penman, who in 1828 survived a 24-minute operation – without anaesthesia – on a facial tumour the size of a watermelon.
And it's also where you will find the gruesome memento (a brown pocketbook) created using the skin of William Burke of body snatching Burke and Hare fame after he was executed for his crimes in 1829.
Though perhaps not for the squeamish (consider this a warning) we found a lot of what we say to be fascinating if a little stomach-churning at points. Photography was not allowed, owing to the sensitive nature of the exhibits meaning we can't really show you more here.
Though some parts were not as interesting to us, we skimmed the dentistry section (as it was nightmare fuel for people afraid of this particular subject) and spent a little more time in the body voyager gallery, it was the Wohl Pathology Museum that really blew us away.
Housed in the upper floor of the striking Playfair Building, this is home to one of the largest collections of pathological anatomy in the world.
Covered by the Human Tissue (Scotland) Act 2006, which allows for the public display of human remains, the museum takes great pains to acknowledge the debt to those whose suffering has advanced our knowledge of medicine, surgery and disease.
There is a truly bewildering selection of nearly every body part you can think of including human skulls, femurs, hearts and kidneys on display with every kind of ailment you can think of and their effects on the organ.
We perused everything from a whole pickled arm featuring a strange wrist fracture to a perplexing hairball the size of a kitten taken from a stomach.
Thought-provoking, mind-twisting, stomach-churning... there are many ways to describe the Surgeon's Hall Museum but to be honest, words don't do it justice.
It's one of the most fascinating places we've ever visited in the capital that is a visceral reminder of not only how far we've come in medical science, but also the sheer impact our city has made on the world.
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