Royal College of Physicians Museum
Collections of Britain’s oldest medical royal college (chartered 1518): portraits of leading physicians, silver and ceremonial objects, rare pharmacopoeias and medical instruments, and famed anatomical tables. Displays track how physicians codified practice, taught anatomy, and communicated authority from the Renaissance to the present.
Opening Hours
What's not to miss inside?
Anatomical Tables (17th century)
Human dissection tables prepared on wooden boards—exceptional survivals showing nerves, vessels and lymphatics laid out for teaching.Stand side-by-side with two tables and compare how different systems (vascular vs. nervous) were presented for students.
📍 Main gallery, anatomy wall
Portraits of Physicians
A visual lineage from Tudor court doctors to modern clinicians charts shifts in status, fashion and the tools of the trade.Find an early portrait with few instruments, then a later one crowded with books and devices—what does each say about medical identity?
📍 Upper galleries
Pharmacopoeias & Remedies
Editions of the College’s Pharmacopoeia (first issued 1618) document the standardisation of drugs and dosing in London and beyond.Compare recipes across editions to see ingredients disappear as chemistry and toxicology advanced.
📍 Rare books / display cases
College Silver & Ceremony
Maces, badges and presentation silver embody the College’s civic role and the rituals that framed professional authority.Trace the iconography—serpents, staffs, laurel—back to classical medicine and public health symbolism.
📍 Introductory cases
Inspire your Friends
- The College received its royal charter in 1518 and later produced the London Pharmacopoeia (from 1618), the city’s official standard for medicines.
- Its anatomical tables are among the earliest surviving English teaching aids of their kind—human preparations mounted on wooden boards for repeated classroom use.
- The portrait collection doubles as a record of diagnostic tools: from canes and books to stethoscopes and sphygmomanometers entering the painter’s frame over time.
