Surgeons’ Hall Museum: A dead interesting visit

There’s something about death and the macabre that fascinates children. I remember finding rotting bird carcasses when I was young and peering at the decaying matter; nowadays I can’t watch Casualty without covering my eyes.

When I told 11-year-old Ellen about the Surgeons’ Hall Museum which has all sorts of body parts preserved in jars, her eyes lit up. She immediately told her friend Lauren who announced that she’d “love to see some real brains”. And so it was that a group of five of us went along to the museum on Nicholson Street in Edinburgh as Lauren’s brother Sebastian was not going to be left out and their mother, Lisa, is a complete gore-aphile who had wanted to go for ages.

To begin with it’s a bit educational with details of when the museum opened and lots about Joseph Lister who was a pioneer in antiseptic techniques for wounds. However, as I was carefully reading these notes there was a delighted squeal from the girls as they found a jar with a gangrenous hand right beside a brain. There is some sort of gruesome appeal of looking at the diseased and dissected body parts. “This is how you take a brain out,” exclaimed Sebastian, examining a model of a skull. “Wow, look at these little foetus skeletons,” said Lisa, while I stared at fabulously long tape worms hung up like freshly made pasta.

And you do learn a lot here – Lisa (who is Canadian) not only found out that Conan Doyle was from Edinburgh but that he was a doctor before he was a novelist. There’s a whole section dedicated to him.

Upstairs I discovered that cosmetic surgery probably started in India around 600BC. There are also displays of old surgical equipment that brought tears to my eyes, and modern ones that look like children’s toys.

To round off our visit we toured the dental section and if you’re searching for a way to persuade your children to brush their teeth, this could be the trip to take.

So if you can’t afford a Damien Hirst, but glory in gore this is definitely worth checking out. There’s no café or shop and no razzamatazz, but I’ve now found out that looking at scientifically preserved human remains is the way to get a tweenie’s attention. Eat your heart out Justin Bieber.

• The Surgeons’ Hall Museum is open from noon-4pm, Monday – Friday, with special weekend opening until 28 October. Admission £5/£3 concessions. For more see www.museum.rcsed.ac.uk