Edinburgh Medical School, Teviot Place

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 20 Oct 2010

The first faculty of medicine at a British university was founded in Edinburgh in 1726. This building, designed by Sir R Rowand Anderson in the style of a Venetian Renaissance palace was completed in 1888. An intended campanile at the east end, based on St. Mark's in Venice, never materialised. The building houses an Anatomy Museum, among the grislier exhibits of which is the skeleton of William Burke, preserved as an explicit consequence of the sentence passed on him for his part in the so-called 'West Port murders' of the late 1820s. His accomplice, William Hare, was persuaded to 'turn King's evidence' against him in order to enable a successful prosecution. In return, Hare was freed while Burke went to the gallows. The two men, who are often described erroneously as body-snatchers, are known to have despatched at least 16 victims to the afterlife in order to sell their dead bodies to the doctors for use as dissection material in anatomy lectures at the Medical School. The trade in corpses developed at a time when the growth of medical science meant that demand greatly outstripped supply. The strength of public indignation aroused by the murders and directed against the medical profession gave added impetus to the passing of the 1832 Anatomy Act which increased the legal supply of corpses to medical schools. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIH91SoRMNs Image

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