Anatomical Museum

The Anatomical Museum of Edinburgh University was created in 1800 when Alexander Monro "secundus", presented his collection of anatomical preparations to the University, together with that of his father, Alexander Monro "primus". It flourished under Sir William Turner, Professor of Anatomy from 1867 to 1903, and Principal of the University from 1903 to 1917. The museum hall was at the heart of the new Medical School designed by the architect Robert Rowand Anderson which opened in 1884. In the 1950s, the three storey museum hall was reduced to a single upper storey but still thrives as a museum.

A number of historical treasures survive in the Anatomy Museum, including the skull of George Buchanan, sixteenth century Scottish humanist and tutor to King James VI, and a collection of models of heads, and life and death masks made in the nineteenth century by the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. Among its most famous exhibits is the skeleton of murderer William Burke who was subjected to dissection by Professor Alexander Monro "tertius" in the University in 1829. Burke was hanged for his part (with William Hare, who turned Queen’s evidence) in supplying freshly suffocated corpses for dissection by the extra-mural anatomist Robert Knox.