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| The Playfair Hall |
After visiting the Anatomical Museum here at the Medical School, I went to see another important collection three
minutes walk away. This is the Surgeons' Hall Museum. Before you reach
the pathology specimens in the main hall, a classical, galleried space designed
by William Playfair, you pass through displays devoted to the history of
surgery, detailing the many advances made by surgeons in Scotland, such as Joseph
Lister, who pioneered the first antiseptic, and James Simpson, who
revolutionized surgery through his discover of the anaesthetic properties of
chloroform. Obscure feelings of gratitude wash over me.
I‘m browsing the lit display cases when a
handsome notebook catches my eye. Bound in what looks like rich brown leather, glossy, with elegant gold writing tooled into it. I lean in close
and read, Burke’s skin pocket book– and
have to take a step backwards, my covetousness turned sour. Burke and Hare, the notorious 19th
century murderers are an integral part of the history of medicine in Edinburgh.
And here is Burke’s death mask beside the little book. I have already seen his skeleton
displayed in one of the glass cabinets at the Anatomical Museum in the
university.
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| Burke's skeleton © Hugh Pastoll |
William Hare is not here. Having testified
against Burke, he was given his freedom. Knox, the surgeon who bought the
bodies of those they murdered, is not here either. Burke was hanged and then publicly
dissected, and souvenirs were made from some of his remains. The
treatment of Burke’s body reflects the offense that his crimes caused to
humanity, but more particularly the harm they caused the medical establishment.
The continued display of his remains in these venerable institutions does have
the air of an object lesson.
There are no women in evidence in the
Surgeon’s Hall, other than as specimens. The portraits and photos are all of
eminent men, men who pushed forward our knowledge and proffered solutions to much
suffering. The process of healing and care of the sick, however, consists of
more than technical solutions, and I find myself wondering how such an elusive,
tender process could ever be captured in a display of objects and photographs.
The world of care – the ordinary and transformative acts of bathing and
nourishing and clothing – has no museum.
Although women are not commemorated in the Surgeons' Hall, the
work of a woman has brought me here. The writer Kathleen Jamie wrote a
magnificent essay on the Surgeons' Hall in her book Findings. It is the
best thing I have read about places like these, places that call forth all
kinds of competing emotions.
‘Dr. Barclay was a man who could take up a tiny
scalpel and flay, most delicately, the corpse of a small child until nothing
remained but arteries and veins running to and from their destinations. The
result hangs here in a glass closet. Around a small skeleton the blood vessels
swarm stiffly, and the skeleton is arranged with arms uplifted, as though at
play. For a while, in this room of still and suspended things, we must suspend
judgement.’ – from ‘Surgeons' Hall’ Kathleen Jamie
© 2005
I urge you to read the full essay, it is a
beautifully structured, thoughtful piece of writing and manages to find an
equilibrium between the seeming cruelty of this slicing and probing and the
motivation that spurs it.
Jamie quotes an 1863 book by the Edinburgh
physician John Brown, entitled Rab and his
Friends. The story features a rare early description of a surgical operation
on a woman with breast cancer. The author asks the reader’s forgiveness for the
young medical students who he describes jostling eagerly for places at this spectacle:
“Don’t
think them heartless…they get over their professional horrors and into their
proper work, and in them pity as an emotion ending in itself, or at least in
tears and a long-drawn breath, lessens – while pity as a motive is quickened
and gains power and purpose. It is well for poor human nature that it is so.”
