The Dome Ceiling in Surgeon's Hall

This is one of the ceilings in Surgeon's Hall. It used to be the school where they taught medicine at the University of Edinburgh. This was a while back, we are talking the times of digging up corpses and selling them secretly to the school so they had fresh cadavers to dissect. We are talking Burke and Hare times. You know, the serial killers that murdered prostitutes and travellers instead of digging them up, to sell them to the school.

Another fun gory detail, after Burke's execution (Hare turned state's witness and betrayed his friend) his body was donated to science. Surgeon's Hall actually has a book bound from the skin of Burke. The joke is that they used his butt cheeks because it already has a natural crack for the book's spine. The Anatomy museum has his skeleton (i've seen it, it's eerie).