File:Crown Office window, Chambers Street - geograph.org.uk - 1629060.jpg

English: Crown Office window, Chambers Street. A remarkable window at No.25 Chambers Street, now part of the Crown Office, preserves clues to a brief episode in the history of medicine in Edinburgh. The first floor and basement were the Museum of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society which moved to these premises in 1878 and closed in 1886 when they were sold to the neighbouring Watt Institution and School of Arts (later Heriot-Watt College). The Museum housed reputedly the finest, though not the largest, phrenological collection anywhere, comprising hundreds of skulls and plaster-cast life and death masks and busts of the famous and the infamous. Figures for the years 1878 to 1885 show that the annual average number of visitors was 1,456. When the Museum closed, the collection was loaned to the University's Anatomical Museum to be displayed in a specially designed 'skullery' on condition of free public access. But, by the late 1930s, long after interest in phrenology had waned, it was stored in a large room above the McEwan Hall where much of it was destroyed when racks of metal shelving collapsed under the weight. What survived was transferred to roof and cellar space in the Department of Anatomy. Of the original 2,500 items only about 300 survived, but still represent the largest collection of its kind in existence. 1629071