museum Archive

  • 754px-Musei_Wormiani_Historia

    Cabinets of Curiosities

    Posted on May 23, 2010 | No Comments
    Two of the most famously described 17th century cabinets were those of Ole Worm, known as Olaus Wormius (1588–1654) (illustration, above right), and Athanasius Kircher (1602–1680). These seventeenth-century cabinets were filled with preserved animals, horns, tusks, skeletons, minerals, as well as other types of equally fascinating man-made...

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  • hunterian

    The Hunterian Museum

    Posted on March 26, 2010 | No Comments
    In 1799 the government purchased the collection of the surgeon and anatomist John Hunter (1728-1793). It was placed in the care of the Company (later the Royal College) of Surgeons. Hunter’s collection of around 15,000 specimens and preparations formed the nucleus of one of the...

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  • Head-in-Jar

    Dr Kahn’s Museum: obscene anatomy in Victorian London

    Posted on March 26, 2010 | No Comments
    Dr Joseph Kahn’s Anatomical and Pathological Museum was the 19th century’s best-known and most visited public museum of anatomy. Established in England in 1851, at the height of popular interest in anatomy, Kahn’s museum was intended to show the ‘wondrous’ structure of the body and...

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  • Holophusikon

    Holophusikon

    Posted on July 5, 2009 | No Comments
    The Holophusikon (or Holophusicon, also known as the Leverian Museum) was a museum of natural curiosities exhibited at Leicester House, on Leicester Square in London, England, from 1775 to 1786 by Ashton Lever. The collection was acquired by a James Parkinson (not the famous doctor) through a lottery in 1786, but continued to be...

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