Fisun Güner explores a macabre celebration of Victorian genius

Exquisite Bodies Wellcome Institute, London

Guy's Hospital in south London ought to erect a monument to the little-known Joseph Towne. He devoted his life to the institution, though he was neither a distinguished medic nor a wealthy benefactor. For 53 years, he was the hospital's anatomical model-maker - living and working in the basement where he produced compellingly lifelike wax models of the dissected, diseased corpses of former patients. He made more than 1,000 wax specimens, some of which are still used for teaching today.

Towne guarded his methods jealously, especially his technique for applying colour to wax: it is said he often worked with a cloth draped over his head and the keyhole to his room blocked. He may have been somewhat eccentric, but he quite rightly saw himself as much more than a technician - he craved recognition as an artist and, to an extent, he achieved that ambition in his day. The Royal Society of Arts awarded him several prizes, including a gold medal in 1825 for an extraordinary flayed and dissected head, of which every elastic sinew and tissue is intricately detailed. (Stalk-eyed and tongue lolling, it is a thing that will induce nightmares in those of a delicate disposition.) This, and others Towne made which show the ravages of tertiary and congenital syphilis, can be seen in the Wellcome Collection's exhibition "Exquisite Bodies".

This thoroughly enjoyable show - and don't imagine that its gruesome, sometimes moving depictions of human suffering preclude it from being enormous fun - invites us to witness the curious, the grotesque and the titillating in a display that successfully marries medical science, art and cultural history, with plenty of sideshow circus freakery thrown in for good measure. It traces the study of anatomy from the 16th century, when the great anatomist (and original body-snatcher) Andreas Vesalius overturned 1,400 years of anatomical misrepresentation, courtesy of Galen, to its wider dissemination in the 19th century.

Behind the curtains of a fairground-like display, visitors are confronted by rows of diseased genitalia fringed by real pubic hair. Beside it, in an open area judged fit for viewing by women and children, you'll find a cutaway model of a sword-swallower, which, you would imagine, might have been especially thrilling when shown next to a live sword-swallowing act. Elsewhere there are recumbent anatomical Venuses, idealised beauties made of wax or ivory with tumbling locks and heads thrown back; models of developing foetuses; and cutaway wax reliefs of mothers in labour, whose Madonna-like serenity betrays nothing of what is going on below, least of all the probing hand of the midwife groping inside them.

There is much to see, to learn and to raise one's eyebrows at in this exhibition, yet Towne emerges as its real star. His exquisite handiwork depicts real people, touchingly humanised. Even today, doctors may sometimes be criticised for treating patients less as people and more as collections of symptoms. Through his skills and dedicated artistry, however, Towne ensured that his subjects, even in death and disfigurement, remained individuals, too.

Until 18 October. www.wellcomecollection.org

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