Robert Knox MD, FRCSEd, FRSEd 1791-1862: the first conservator of the college museum.
In 1791, the year in which Mozart died, there was born in Edinburgh a man who had some of the attributes of genius and whose name, but for a trivial mischance, might today occupy a distinguished place in the illustrious history of the Edinburgh Medical School. Instead of this, his career was shattered and his reputation blighted forever by fortuitous association with a gruesome and macabre scandal the story of which is as shocking today as it was to our forebears 172 years ago. To the world at large the memory of this man, Robert Knox, is almost as infamous as Bluebeard or Jack the Ripper, while his outstanding abilities and substantial achievements are largely forgotten, and yet he was never formally accused, far less convicted of any crime.