Plans are in place to enhance the collections through film, audio and interactive technology

There are at least 20,000 items in the collections of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and it is quite rightly recognised as one of the great international medical collections of the world. The collections are of even greater significance if one considers that the Library and archive holds institutional and other records dating from the 1460s and extensive archival material relating to the college membership and to the history of medicine and surgery in Scotland.

 The key thing to remember about such collections is that museums rarely manage to display more than 20% of their objects. The College is no exception, but it has the opportunity to do much more, and open up a collection of around 3000 objects on its upper floor in the Pathology Museum. This simple fact is just one of the changes to be made as part of the Lister Project. The collections have always been central to the teaching ethos of the College, that is why a great deal of effort was expended to acquire the collections of John Barclay and Charles Bell in the nineteenth century.

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh has launched a project to conserve and enhance Surgeons’ Hall Museum. Director of Heritage Chris Henry reveals the ambitious plans for our renowned collections

When I first started work at the College in 2010 it was clear to me that there was an appetite for heritage within the Institution; and several grand schemes had been developed to alter the museum and surrounding buildings into a much more public-friendly venue. The College has always stood for high teaching standards and surgical outcomes, and in a certain sense heritage has to play a secondary role to this aspiration. Nevertheless, the general public has increasingly become interested in what surgeons do and how they do it.

Following the London Olympics, now is the ideal time for the profession to promote the benefits of exercise, Surgeons News' Editor John Duncan introduces our feature section

In 2012, after an incredible Olympics games, it would be easy to equate exercise with the sort of elite sport we have witnessed over the past weeks. Elite sport is something that most of us are spectators at, not participants in, whereas exercise is something we can all undertake. For most of us, the importance of the effect of exercise on mortality should be of both personal and professional interest.

I recently listened to Dr Andrew Murray talk about this issue in his role promoting exercise for health gain in Scotland. Perhaps I was alone in not realising the magnitude of the effect of exercise, or even just activity, on mortality and the impact of it in comparison to smoking, obesity and diabetes. In a nutshell, it is better to be fat and fit than thin and unfit!