in the latter decades of the 20th century the emphasis changed to make the collections more interesting to the lay public and more easily interpreted by them. in 1989 a grant from the sir jules thorn charitable trust resulted in a permanent exhibition entitled “500 years of surgery in scotland”, which made use of a wide variety of media including models, paintings, photographs, film loops, book, journal and newspaper displays and other memorabilia. this together with a regular series of temporary exhibitions and constant improvement of the interpretation resulted in a progressive increase in visitor numbers.