Whenever he was visiting London, Byron would stay at the
Hippocrates Club on Dean Street in Soho—a private doctors-only club of which
Byron had been made an honorary member thanks to his contributions into the causes
and cures of clubfoot.
The first time Shelley met him there for dinner, Byron gave
him the grand tour, showing him, among other rooms, the immense library with
its priceless historical collection of ancient medical manuscripts, the Anatomy
Room with its articulated skeletons and plaster models of the human circulatory
system, and the Hall of Cerebella, in which were displayed the preserved brains
of everything from dormice to dolphins.
“Shall we have a drink before dinner?” Byron asked
rhetorically, and led Shelley into a high-ceilinged room, with a bar at one end, whose four walls were covered with shelves that groaned under the weight of hundreds of specimen
jars. Upon examining the contents of
these jars, Shelley was shocked to perceive that they contained perfectly-preserved
examples of the male reproductive organs of every animal species on earth, including humans.
“Good Lord!” he
exclaimed. “This room is completely
filled with specimens of Male Genitalia!”
“Of course it is,” Byron explained. “This is the Members Lounge.”
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