The collection and display of anatomical specimens was a particular area of interest during the Enlightenment. From 1739 until 1800 an estimated thirty-nine anatomy museums appeared in England. Private individuals and anatomy teachers also kept their own collections and used specimens from human and comparative anatomy, as well as anatomical models and illustrations, for private display and for public teaching. What is perhaps less well known is that many items found in collections centred on female reproduction. Growing interest in maternal bodies can be seen in two collections at opposite ends of the long eighteenth century. The first, depicted in Nehemiah Grew's catalogue of the Royal Society, Musaeum Regalis Societatis (1681), contained just three items centred on female reproduction. One was a preserved uterus, its vessels filled with wax, prepared by the Dutch physician and microbiologist Jan Swammerdam. Two other items are foetuses, one a foetal skeleton and the second a preserved foetus. Some seventy years after Grew's catalogue first appeared in print, William Hunter began his 20-year study of the human gravid uterus, culminating in his obstetrical atlas, The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus Exhibited in Figures (1774). Hunter died in 1783 and his massive and varied collection of art, literature, natural history, and medical teaching material was transferred to the University of Glasgow in 1807 and opened for public viewing. An early report of the collection indicates that one room contained 500 preparations and engravings of the gravid uterus, including a series of plaster casts of the pregnant uterus that correspond to illustrations of the gravid uterus found in Hunter's atlas.