★★★★★
‘Eye of newt and toe of frog/ Wool of bat and tongue of dog/Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting/ Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing.” Macbeth’s witches and their active ingredients have absolutely nothing on the anatomist John Hunter and his museum. Into that hubbling, bubbling cauldron Hunter might have tossed: aorta of a drifting turtle, testes of a typical mole, proboscis of a pickled whelk, skull of double-headed calf and liver of Brazilian rat.
The revamp of the Hunterian Museum in Lincoln’s Inn Fields is excellent, if nasty. After a queasy trip of the cabinets, I left jelly-legged, however pleased. The museum resumes today after a six-year, £4.6million advancement. There are 3,000 items on display screen, amongst them more than 2,000 physiological preparations from Hunter’s collection.
