Wood’s metal and the evolution of fusible alloys

I’m pretty squeamish. Not for me the iconic eye scene in Luis Buñuel’s film Un chien Andalou. In hospitals, my imagination can run riot; to my profound embarrassment I once fainted in an intensive care unit at the sight of metal struts supporting shattered bones. So it’s odd that two of my favourite museums are in the Royal Colleges of Surgeons of London and Edinburgh. If you’ve never been to the Hunterian or the Surgeon’s Hall museums drop everything and go! They’re the places to be if you want to know what an aneurism looks like or see polyps of the colon (without having to watch them on a screen as a probe explores your interior).