Introduction

Based at the Royal Free Hospital in Hampstead, the UCL Pathology Museum contains nearly 6,000 human pathology specimens relating to the study of disease and the history of medicine. Today, this important collection is used to facilitate teaching, research and public engagement in human health and disease, both at the museum and across University College London.
Many of our specimens, the majority of which are preserved in fluid, demonstrate common historic diseases like rickets and tuberculosis. Alongside these, the museum contains examples of skeletal material, foreign bodies (things that have been swallowed, inhaled, or inserted), wax models, plaster casts and microscope slides.

Join our museum curator for a tour of this historic medical teaching collection, usually only accessible to students and researchers by appointment, to explore its past, present, and future.

Please be aware that the museum contain human remains and UCL acknowledges it is likely that the people represented did not consent for their remains to be retained.

Background

UCL Museums & Cultural Programmes took over the management of the Pathology Collection from the UCL Medical School in 2009, since then we have worked in collaboration with doctors and University College London academics to develop a unique and embedded medical teaching museum. Today, the collection is made up of specimens from several London teaching hospitals, including University College Hospital, the Middlesex Medical School, The Royal Free Hospital, and the internationally renowned Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children.