Two hundred people had booked tickets for our "Tell them our stories" event in the Anatomy Lecture Theatre! Why so many? Someone commented that people have always been fascinated by the exhibits in the Surgeons' Hall Museum; it has long been one of the City's 'must-see' places, and indeed, the Tansey & Mekie 'History of the Museum' (1978) refers to a time when 'Visitors of the lower classes, mechanics, sailors and soldiers have uniformly been quiet, careful and most orderly…visitors of the lower classes seem to take more interest in the specimens than those of the higher, many of whom, especially ladies, merely walk through the rooms without looking at the objects particularly.'
The programme included me talking about my background research on some of the exhibits, and reading extracts from my partly fictionalised stories of the 'donors'; poet and novelist Diana Hendry talking about her work as Writer in Residence at Dumfries Infirmary, and how she had come to write a poem about the Museum's 'Man with Three Legs'; and Andrew Connell, the Museum's Collections Manager, talking – in front of a background of constantly changing images from the Collection – about new uses for the Collection.
So the three of us represented a broad range of interests in the exhibits, perhaps appealing to a mix of medical historians, poets, writers, ethicists and scientists.
