Visit our free #Edinburgh museum, the Physicians’ Gallery.
The museum explores our relationship with health, medicine and our bodies.
Combining historical objects, rare books and artworks.
Over 50 objects, illustrations and books are on display, sharing stories from medieval medicine to modern day treatments. Examine our 5.5 metre long illustrated alchemical scroll, try our family friendly activities and discover rebel Jacobite medicines.
📍 Physicians’ Gallery, 11 Queen Street, EH2 1JQ
📅 Mondays – Fridays, 10am – 4.30pm
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Our new exhibition is now open!
Rag: A History of Blood explores the social, medical and cultural history of blood.
The exhibition runs until 16th October
📍 Physicians’ Gallery, 11 Queen Street, EH2 1JQ
📅 Mondays – Fridays, 10am – 4.30pm
Cold drawn castor oil
1800s
Castor oil is distilled from the beans of the plant Ricinus communis. It was believed that cold drawn castor oil, produced by pressing the beans without the use of heat or other chemicals, was of higher quality than regular castor oil.
Castor oil is one of the oldest known drugs. Mentions of its use as a laxative can be found in 3500-year-old Egyptian papyrus scrolls. It was also used for medicinal purposes in Greek and Roman times. Egyptian doctors believed that applying castor oil to the eyes protected them from irritation.
In the 1800s castor oil was viewed as a miracle cure for almost every ailment. It was often prescribed to help with heartburn and even as a means of inducing labour. It was one of the most common medicines sold by travelling quacks when they visited the Highlands.
Due to its use as a quick-working laxative, castor oil was sometimes used as a humiliating punishment, notably in Fascist Italy when Mussolini’s power was said to be backed by ‘the bludgeon and castor oil’. In the modern day, castor oil is most often marketed as promoting hair growth and regrowth.
We're launching a new history of medicine award!
Applicants must submit an abstract research paper of no more than 1,000 words.
Deadline: 14 August 2026
Award amount: £1,000
Award finalists will present their papers at a public event on 15 October 2026.
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These objects are on permanent display in our Physicians’ Gallery.
Patent Magneto-Electric Machine (mid-1800s)
Schall And Son Electromagnetic Machine (c1900)
These machines were designed to administer electric shocks. Electricity was a popular Victorian treatment for a range of disorders, especially those associated with nerves and mental health. Electricity was also believed to cure asthma, blindness, epilepsy, tapeworms and constipation.
The earliest uses of electricity in medicine involved treating the sick with electric fish. Patients would either stand in a pool of fish-filled water, or have live fish placed on their skin. By the 1800s devices like this Patent Magneto Machine produced electricity using magnets and a hand crank. The brass rods were either held by the patient or placed in contact with their skin to deliver the shock. By 1900 tools like this Schall and Son Machine used batteries to deliver a much more powerful shock.
This book is on display in our temporary exhibition ‘Rag: A History of Blood’.
Bartolomeo Eustachio, Tabulae Anatomicae (1714)
Doctors in Ancient Greece believed that the veins and arteries were two entirely separate circulatory systems, with arteries coming from the heart and veins from the liver. According to this idea, veins contained only blood, while arteries contained a kind of vital spirit. This idea of a twin-circulatory system continued into the Renaissance. At that time anatomists began to study and question the mechanisms of circulation and the workings of the arteries and veins.
This book was compiled in the mid-1500s, although it was first published over 150 years later. In it, the Italian anatomist Eustachio explored his own ideas around blood circulation. Eustachio’s discoveries included a valve in the heart which functions only during foetal development.
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Wednesday 29 July 2026
12.30pm - 12.50pm
No.11 Queen Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1JQ
Free entry
Join us at the Physicians’ Gallery on the last Wednesday of every month at 12.30pm for a curator-led talk exploring one of the objects on display in our Gallery.
Our topic for this talk is the medicinal use of antimony. Poisonous, vomit-inducing, illegal and in high demand, antimony was the go-to medicine for fashionable types.
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This image is taken from the title page of a 1600s medical text by the Dutch physician Johann Pechlin. It is a book which covers a very wide range of medical subjects – from pathology to gynaecology, venereal diseases to disability.
The title pages of medical texts often acted as promotion or marketing for their authors, and this is no exception. It was quite common to use elements of ancient Greek or Roman symbolism to connect you and your work to the authority of antiquiry. Here we have a woman in a Greco-Roman-style tunic with a five pointed star on her hear. The star has the letters SALUS on it – suggesting this figure is Salus, the Roman goddess well-being.
This image is taken from ‘Observatio physico-medicarum libri tres’ (1691).
This object is on display in our temporary exhibition ‘Rag: A History of Blood’.
Blood Pressure Monitor (c.1920)
This monitor was manufactured by a French company, Boulitte. The first blood pressure monitor had been invented, in 1881. Blood pressure had first been studied in animal experiments over 100 years earlier. This process had involved puncturing an artery and inserting a brass tube. But now this device could easily and painlessly be used to measure blood pressure without breaking the skin.
The device works in much the same way as modern monitors – a cuff made of non-expanding material is wrapped around the arm. Inside the cuff is a rubber bag. The bag is inflated until the pulse stops and the pressure is then decreased until the pulse begins again.
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These objects are on display in our temporary exhibition ‘Rag: A History of Blood’.
Hey Girls Pad and Cup (2023)
These re-usable period products were created by Hey Girls, a Scottish social enterprise. For every product they sell, one is given free to a charity or group in need. Period poverty is a very real problem and around 500 million women worldwide struggle to manage their periods safely. Stigma surrounding periods can make it harder to ask for help.
A recent poll by ActionAid showed that 21% of women in the UK struggle to afford menstrual products. Some of those surveyed said they would reuse their tampons or keep them in for longer than recommended while others used alternatives like toilet paper or socks. Women living under period poverty are at greater risk of Toxic Shock Syndrome and urinary tract infections.
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This Turkish Bath in Leith was what was known as a ‘fill and empty’ bath. This meant that wealthier swimmers swam earlier in the day, in clean water, and then swimming got cheaper towards the end of the day as the water got dirtier – the poorest customers swam late in the evening
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** #medical #medicine #edinburgh #histmed #discoveredinburgh
This book is on display in our temporary exhibition ‘Rag: A History of Blood’.
William Harvey, De Motu Cordis (1628)
This book is the first text by an English writer to explain the process of blood circulation. Its author, physician William Harvey, described the heart as a pump, pushing the blood around the body. On his dissection table, Harvey examined everything from mussels and eels to human cadavers.
The first-known person to make the discovery of blood circulation was the Arabic physician Ibn al-Nafīs in the 1200s. Practicing in Cairo, he had made his discovery when studying the hearts of the corpses he dissected. The next description of pulmonary circulation was published in 1553 by Spanish physician Michael Servetus. Most copies of Servetus’ book were burnt by religious authorities after accusations of heresy were made against him.
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