Art UK is delighted to announce the launch of Surgeons' Hall Museums guide on the Bloomberg Connects app. Surgeons' Hall Museums is in Edinburgh and is owned by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The museum has been in its current location on Nicolson Street since 1832, making it one of Scotland's oldest museums. The museum's collections grew from 1699 after 'natural and artificial curiosities' were publicly sought.

In 2015 the museum underwent a major £4.4 million Heritage Lottery Funded redevelopment. Originally established as a medical teaching resource, the museum is now open to everyone.

The Bloomberg Connects app is a free digital guide where you can explore content from numerous cultural organisations. Wherever you are in the world, you can access a range of content, either to add to your experience viewing the gallery in person, or to enjoy from the comfort of your own home. Surgeons' Hall Museums is delighted to join the diverse cultural institutions currently represented on the app.

Surgeons' Hall Museums' guide on the Bloomberg Connects app

Last year was Surgeons' Hall Museums' busiest ever, with over 100,000 visitors coming through the doors. Beyond physical visitors, the museum also has a sizable global online audience who regularly engage with the museum via social media. The museum has been looking at ways to make our collections more accessible both to those who have not yet had the opportunity to visit and to those visiting the museum who might face limitations, such as a language barrier. Bloomberg Connects has provided the perfect platform to allow the museum to do this.

Surgeons' Hall Museums is split into four galleries – the History of Surgery Museum, the Wohl Pathology Museum, the Dental Collection and Body Voyager. At launch, the museum's guide will feature a full tour of the History of Surgery galleries with highlighted objects and curated content as well as a full tour of the Dental Collection.

The Wounded following the Battle of Corunna: Tetanus Following Gunshot Wounds

The History of Surgery galleries take the visitor on a journey of development from the founding of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh in 1505 through to the discovery of anti-septic techniques in the late nineteenth century. It explores subjects such as the barber-surgeon, the growth of medical teaching in Edinburgh, body-snatching, Burke and Hare, and the groundbreaking developments in anaesthesia and aseptic technique. The Dental Collection covers the history of dentistry examining the early attempts to 'cure the tooth', the various traditional methods of tooth removal and the battle to specialise and regulate dentistry.

Surgeons' Hall Museum's guide will also feature past temporary exhibitions that can no longer be seen in person. At launch, the guide will have the extremely popular temporary exhibition 'In Safe Hands: The Battle for Midwifery' which closed in March this year. The exhibition, co-curated with the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh's Archivist, Jaqueline Cahif, examined the history of midwifery, charting the rise of the man-midwife and the medicalisation of childbirth.

The current temporary exhibition running at the museum is 'Examining the eye: medicine's oldest specialty', which looks at ophthalmology. The exhibition explores the development of the specialty from oculist to ophthalmologist and studies the anatomy of the eye, whilst providing fun facts and strange fiction about one of the most complex areas of the human body. While the exhibition will not be available on Bloomberg Connects at launch, the exhibition will be put on later this year and will remain available after the exhibition closes in April next year.

Aside from adding new temporary exhibitions, the museum has many other plans to develop its Bloomberg Connects guide. One of the plans is to add tours of the Wohl Pathology and Body Voyager galleries.

Safer Anaesthetics case at the History of Surgery exhibit

The Whole Pathology Museum is home to one of the largest and most historic pathology collections in the world. The galleries allow visitors to discover the eleven specialty fields of surgery that are recognised by the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. Key themes explored in this gallery are the history of preservation, individual collectors, and the impact of war on the development of surgery.

In contrast, the Body Voyager galleries explore more modern developments, depicting the impact of technology on surgical development, including robots and computer-assisted techniques.

As the focus of the Bloomberg Connects guide for Surgeons' Hall Museums is to enhance accessibility to the collections, the museum is currently exploring adding a BSL tour to their guide as well as adding more descriptive audio and video. As a lot of families visit the museum, Surgeons' Hall is looking at ways to utilise the app to engage their younger visitors and is exploring the possibility of adding a tour aimed at children on their guide.

To explore Surgeons' Hall Museums guide, download the Bloomberg Connects app today!

Keshena Goldie, Museum Social Media and Marketing Officer at Surgeons' Hall Museums, The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh