The London Science Museum

Requiring a considerable investment of your time just to run through at top speed, most of this vast museum is dedicated to industry and engineering. There's a gallery of locomotive engines, another of the space program (the original Apollo 11 capsule is here, for some reason). But then there's the Wellcome Wing, composed of three floors way up in the roof of the building that get little traffic due to tricky accessibility. As in yesterday's post, its contents are from Sir Wellcome. But unlike the Wellcome Museum, there's an enormous amount of stuff to be seen in here. A few selections:



various anatomical waxes from 18th century Italy.

Anatomical Venus with removable breastplate and organs, half-scale.


Carved wax bas-reliefs intended to instruct medical students.


A box of 60 heads from 1851, the era of phrenology (the belief that human characteristics could be determined by measuring the skull). #54 is the head of a scientist.

One of the three floors is a timeline on the history of surgery, told in several dozen dioramas. But I shot those in 3D, and will need to feed the photos through the stereo-optitron when I'm back in the states. Stay tuned.

Museum Website