Abstract
THE scientific report of the Royal College of Surgeons for the year 1940-41 states that the Museum and store rooms were hit during an air raid, incendiaries increased the damage, falling girders broke up the basement below, and heavy rain the following days drenched the exposed specimens. The loss, though serious, was not complete. In the anatomical series 1,207 specimens survived out of 2,569. In the osteological series, out of 1,655 Hunterian specimens only 94 were saved, and 6,209 of 15,545 College specimens. On the other hand, the whole of the odontological series was saved. Nearly half the 5,400 Hunterian physiological specimens escaped, but only 2,026 of the 14,850 College specimens in this series. Of the human and comparative teratological specimens only 23 of 170 Hunterian specimens remain, but the College specimens have largely survived. The better part of the Hunterian pathological series remains, but the College specimens have been reduced to about a fifth, and the whole of the Townbee and Strangeways collection has gone ; the Army Medical War Collection has been reduced from 3,000 to 100. All the mummified specimens and the historical collection are lost, and the instruments collection has been reduced from 2,500 to 2,000. The zoological and anthropological pictures have survived, including Tonks's war pictures. The total loss of specimens amounts to 39,259 out of 65,827.
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Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Nature 149, 107 (1942). https://doi.org/10.1038/149107d0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/149107d0