Royal College of Physicians

September twenty-third, fifteen eighteen... King Henry the Eighth raises his royal seal, about to grant a charter that would forever change medicine in England. Thomas Linacre and five fellow physicians kneel before him, having convinced the monarch that London's streets crawl with dangerous quacks and charlatans masquerading as healers. With one stroke of his pen, Henry creates the oldest medical college in England, empowering these six men to license real physicians and prosecute the fraudsters who were literally killing people with their ignorance. Standing here at eleven St Andrews Place, near Regent's Park, you're looking at Sir Denys Lasdun's striking nineteen sixty-four Grade One listed building... the same brutalist architect who designed the National Theatre. Those dramatic concrete fins and angular windows you see aren't just for show... they create a fortress-like appearance that echoes the College's original mission as medicine's watchdog. Step inside and you'll discover treasures that survived centuries of chaos. The silver collection lost most pieces to thieves in sixteen sixty-five, just before the Great Fire of London. But the real showstoppers are six seventeenth-century anatomical tables... made from actual dried human blood vessels and nerves, mounted on wood and varnished. These gruesome teaching aids exist because Elizabeth the First granted the College access to four bodies of hanged criminals each year for dissection. Five centuries later, this fortress of medicine still stands guard over medical standards worldwide.