On the left-hand side of the first cabinet, there are two floating glass shelves. Our first object is on the top shelf.

Here, on a landscape A5 piece of paper, is a watercolour medical illustration of a single left eye. The creamy paper is mounted on a piece of brown cardboard. The painting is circular and in the centre of the page. There is no background; the painting is suspended like a full moon in an empty sky. The image filling the circle is a close-up of an eye, which is wide open, staring blankly out towards us. The pupil is deep black and surrounded by the iris, which is dark green overlayed with curling striations of light blue, which darken to black at the edges.

Reflected in the iris are some elements of the room the sitter is in. There is a four-panelled window in the top right corner and a strip of yellow light along the bottom. A ring of inflamed pink surrounds the iris, and a network of bright red blood vessels spreads across the white of the eyeball. From the upper eyelid, a dense but short layer of straight ebony eyelashes grows. Similarly, the lower eyelid is decorated with sparse, short black lashes, and fine lines create wrinkles, indicating the subject has a few years of smiling and frowning to their name.

The skin of the subject is a mottled, flushed cream. Delicate layers of blues and purples shade the skin above the eyelid, creating a sense of depth to the hollow of the eye below the brow.

The brow itself is dark brown, thin and straight, with a few outlying hairs painted with fine brushstrokes. The right side of the brow meets the bridge of the nose, which is suggested by a few painted highlights but is cropped from the image. A few highlights also signify the cheekbones and inner eye. At the bottom left of the painting is the small black inked signature of the artist J.G.

This painting was previously housed with hospital case notes and was one of many used as diagnostic tools at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. Whereas illustrators now have multiple imaging technologies at their disposal, hand-drawn and painted work on paper was once the only way to render some of the very precise detail needed to communicate how medical conditions and procedures looked, even with the advent of medical photography and X-rays.

These early twentieth-century watercolours of eye conditions show the power of medical illustration as a communicative tool, and demonstrate the flourishes used by the artist (such as fine wrinkles under the eyes) that may not add anything to the diagnosis but do highlight the patient behind the picture.

Below the medical eye illustration on the second shelf is a handbook called

by Robert Meldrum, a missionary teacher of blind and visually impaired people, published in 1883. It shows Dr Moon’s alphabet for the blind. The right-hand page introduces the new alphabet ‘Moon type’ in raised symbols, accompanied by Latin script. This is enclosed in a decorative border featuring Queen Victoria’s royal crest.

There are 27 ‘moon type’ characters shown, including two letter Zeds. The basic premise of the type is to simplify the shapes of the Latin alphabet into a single stroke or a less cursive shape, adopting simple lines that either curl smoothly or are starkly angular. This makes each letter more clearly distinguishable by touch.

For instance, a capital D in moon type consists of a single curve – open to the left - without the finishing vertical stroke connecting the curve ends. Or a capital T is just a horizontal line without the downstroke.

Some letters, such as H and G, are changed completely – H becomes a circle with a raised dot in the centre.

To aid understanding, the Latin alphabet that accompanies each letter has dotted sections that detail which parts of each letter have been omitted to create the raised, moon version below.

Under the alphabet, the author provides a textual example of the type using the phrase ‘God is love’, in both alphabets – the L and O of LOVE are unchanged in moon type, but the G resembles a walking stick with a curved handle, and the E is simplified to a right angle missing two of its short horizontal lines.

Accompanying text reads: ‘The above alphabet consists of 8 of the Roman letters unaltered, 14 others with parts left out, and 5 new and very simple forms which may be easily learned by the aged and persons whose fingers are hardened by work.’ At first, Moon printed texts himself. From the beginning, the invention of the type was tied into Moon's evangelical Christian faith - he wanted to bring scripture to those whose lack of sight meant that they couldn't read the Bible in conventional ways.

Moon's Alphabet was also adaptable to many different languages (particularly helpful to the travelling evangelical mission community). The sheer variety of texts, formats and ways to consume reading (without being treated as an object of pity or potential vessel for conversion) offered by our collections shows just how far reading for blind and visually impaired people has come since the earliest examples we hold.

Mounted on the glass between the dividing central metal frame and the vinyl sticker on the left side of the cabinet is a 3D printed tactile example of the alphabet and the phrase ‘God is love’, which you are welcome to explore through touch. This is just to the left of the object on display.

Moving to the right-hand side of the cabinet, where there are three shelves, on the top shelf is a 3D teaching model of an eye. It is made from colourfully painted plaster and displayed in a worn black painted wooden box with a green-painted interior. The box measures 32 x 27cm.

This is a sagittal dissection of the eye, which shows an eyeball sliced in half on the left surrounded by fat, muscles, and the skull, with the optic nerve leading off to the right. The eyeball is concave and about the size of half a grapefruit that has been hollowed out. It is made of shiny plaster, painted pale blue and traced with red veins.

Moving left to right across the model, we start with the eyelids that enclose the eyeball. These muscles are represented by two thin walls of red plaster with a gap in the middle. Moving in through this gap, you meet the white ridge of the cornea. This forms a round protrusion on the eyeball. Behind the cornea, in the concave hollow of the dissected eyeball, is the iris. This is a light blue wall with a semicircle removed from its top ridge to show where light would pass through it to the lens, which is directly behind it.

The lens is almond-shaped and protrudes out of the hollow eyeball. At the base of the lens, a thick, undulating line of deep red is etched into the surface of the eye, representing the ciliary body. Behind this, the pale blue interior of the eyeball is peppered with a spidery network of blood vessels that can be traced to their source artery, alongside the optic nerve, which is on the far right of the eyeball. In this model, the nerve is depicted in white, flanked by two pale blue walls representing the protective dural sheath that surrounds it. The nerve continues to the right until it meets the wooden box.

Surrounding the eyeball and optic nerve are seams of bright yellow plaster representing fat. These areas are hemmed in by bands of grisly red muscles which stretch around the eyeball. Next to these muscles lies the orbit of the eye – the structure of bone which supports and protects it. There is no beautification in this model; it is a clinical and scientific view of human anatomy that is rather visceral. Each anatomic part is labelled with a small black number, further dissecting the physical structures of the eye and echoing its purpose as an active teaching aid. For example, number 18 is the cornea.

Below the contemporary models, on the lowest shelf in the cabinet, is a 3D teaching model of the eye made from wood, plaster and glass. It was made by the Medical Supply Association in Edinburgh. It is a topographical eye model, which shows the spatial relationships between the eyeball and skull. The model is mounted on an angular wooden base and measures 31 by 25 cm.

It is worn with use, as students were encouraged to dismantle it to familiarise themselves with the different parts of the eye.

The colourfully painted model has a white painted plaster and glass spherical eyeball protruding from the front, about the size of a small bowling ball. Running round the centre of the eyeball is the dividing line, which gapes slightly, revealing how the model can be prised apart. This rests on a creamy yellow plaster section representing the orbit of the eye, which is the part of the skull that contains and protects it. Here, the orbit resembles a crescent moon cupping the eye. The outer layer of the eye, also known as the sclera, forms a white sphere; on its round outer surface, three deep burgundy bands of sinewy muscle support eye movement.

At the front of the eyeball is the circular cornea, which is made of glass, mimicking the transparency of this tissue. The cornea performs two primary jobs: defending against foreign objects entering the eye and refracting light as it passes into the eye. Removing this first layer reveals the iris. The iris is light blue, striated with pale yellow lines. The iris expands or contracts to allow more or less light to reach the pupil, allowing vision to adapt to changing light levels. Removing this layer reveals the lens, here a small glass sphere tucked within. The front of the lens glass is grooved, the rest of it is smooth and is decorated with red and purple blood vessels.

Taking the lens out of the model exposes the optic nerve, which emerges from the rear of the lens and reaches the back of the model. The optic nerve is what connects the information that the eyes receive to the brain to allow us to create images.

The optic nerve of this model has sadly broken in half; a botched repair was attempted with Sellotape, scarring the object permanently with a yellowing line. Removing the lens exposes the retina, which forms the back of the eye and is responsible for converting light into nerve signals, which it sends to the optic nerve. This is painted a dark chocolate brown.

Behind this is the other half of the sclera (the white of the eye), which is not removable from the model. Behind the sclera lies a tangle of arteries and capillaries which surround the optic nerve and are a striking crimson against the cream of the orbit. To the right of these, three bands of muscle are visible extending from the white of the eye along the orbit to the back of the model.

This is the last item in the first cabinet. Please feel free to move over to the left-hand cabinet – or take a break and come back!

Below the plaster model on the middle shelf, we have 3D printed Contemporary Anatomy Teaching Models 1 and 2 and an accompanying braille sheet.

They were recently developed by Jonathan Shammas and Tammie Hunter, both Anatomy students, based on anatomical models from the Edinburgh University Anatomy Museum collection. They build on the technologies of their predecessors to make the anatomy of the eye more accessible through modern techniques.

Both models are replicas of the eyeball that can be disassembled like a Russian doll to explore 6 different internal structures of the eye. Here, the eyeball is enlarged to about the size of a tennis ball, and they are made from a durable, hard plastic so they can be handled as teaching aids.

Model 1 is displayed pieced together into a ball shape with the optic nerve protruding like a cable from its back. This model, along with the braille sheet, is displayed on the back half of the shelf, furthest away from us. In front of these is Model 2, which is displayed dissected into its six different parts.

Model 1 was developed first by Jonathan and was designed to be used in conjunction with an audio pen, with information that a user could listen to as they broke down the model. The information guides the user through each of the layers, their function and some common conditions that impact eyesight, which result from damage to these parts of the eye.

The goal of this model was to help blind and visually impaired people understand their conditions. However, Model 1 is very smooth textured, and all the layers were the same grey colour, making it difficult to feel the difference between them and limiting its utility.

Following on from this, Tammie developed Model 2, making some significant changes to the design. Here she moves away from the traditional colours employed by anatomy models like muted reds, creams and browns and instead opts for vibrant hues of grass green, sky blue, hot pink, sunshine yellow, coal black and bright white.

The 6 model parts are the same as Model 1, except that each layer is created with a distinct texture ranging from the delicate wavy grooves of the iris to the mountainous zigzag of bumps on the sclera. Instead of using an audio pen, Model 2 is accompanied by a Braille information sheet to explain more of the eye’s function.

As the models are significantly larger than life, closer to the size of a tennis ball than an eyeball, the Scottish Sensory Centre advised that, before exploring the models, it would be helpful to hold an object the same size as an eye to help with size perception. This led Tammie to use puffy sand a cost-effective material, which has a similar texture to an actual eyeball (though the real thing would be more jelly-like), to create a life-size eyeball for people to hold first, before using the scaled-up model.

These tactile models are an exciting innovation, and this process of adaptation could be used in any subject which relies on visual information for teaching. Such models can enrich learning experiences for everyone, not just students or people who are blind or visually impaired.