London's Science Museum houses one of the largest and most significant collections of medical artifacts in the world. Each object is a profound reminder of the fragility of human existence, but also of the extraordinary lengths gone to by scientists and medical professionals in the attempt to conquer mortality. Among the 100 objects from the collection shown here in color phots are a Bronze Age trepanned skull, healing water from an ancient Greek well, a 17th-century barber's pole, a pharmacist's ceramic leech jar, a gold memento mori ring, a Great War blood transfusion apparatus, and a prototype MRI scanner.