Evelyn tables

Six similar tables are held by the Royal College of Physicians, brought to London from Italy by John Finch.

Each table displays a different part of the human body – arteries, nerves, veins – dissected out from a human specimen and glued to a wooden board made from pine planks, planed and glued together, with the whole covered with several coats of varnish.

His diary also records the arrival of the tables in London in April 1649 (the journey via Venice having been delayed in Holland) and his donation of the tables to the nascent Royal Society in October 1667, which displayed them in the "repository" (museum) in the west gallery of Gresham College on Bishopsgate from 1674.

A paper on the tables of arteries and veins was presented by William Cowper on 21 January 1701 and later printed in Philosophical Transactions, with his drawings engraved by Michael van der Gucht.

After a move to a new location in Crane Court, off Fleet Street, the tables were acquired by the rapidly expanding British Museum in June 1781, and then bought by the Royal College of Surgeons in 1809.