1. Worms, leeches and white dog mess in Leeds

Medicine being one of the more yucky professions, this child-oriented specialist collection next to the famous St James hospital offers splendid opportunities for revulsion: jars for essence of earthworm - worms boiled down in olive oil; tubes for fixing leeches to the eyes; a selection of seventeenth-century medical textbooks which include remedies made from dog mess - the white kind only, said to cure sore throats when mixed with honey and spread on your neck. Case of epilepsy? Get some male brains down you, boy. Touch of TB? Try swallowing live snails, girl.

· Thackray Museum, Beckett Street, Leeds LS9 7LN, 0113 244 4343. Tue-Sun, plus bank holiday Mon 10am-5pm. Adults £4.40, children £3.30, under 5s free, family ticket £14.

2. Long fingernailed mummy in Newcastle

Irt-irw, the Egyptian mummy, lies in her opened coffin as part of the Land of the Pharaohs gallery - emaciated and desiccated but still lifelike 2,500 years after her death. She was unearthed in 1798 when Napoleon invaded, then unwrapped in 1830. The fingernails on her right hand are spookily long, probably because she played a musical instrument of some lost kind.

· Hancock Museum, Barras Bridge, Haymarket, Newcastle NE2 4PT, 0191 222 7418. Mon-Sat 10am-5pm, Sun 2-5pm. Adults £3.95, children £2.95, family £12.50, under 4s free.

3. Old toilet practices near Bath

There is an example of the way we used to relieve ourselves - a small stone-floored room with a metal bucket beneath a wooden bench with a hole in it, a jug of water where the flushing cistern ought to be and torn-up copies of 1899 Daily Mails to wipe your bum with. There is a big round fluffy beige thing which looks quite acceptable till you're told what it is - a hairball from a bull's stomach.

· Radstock Museum, Waterloo Rd, Radstock, Bath BA3 3ER, 01761 437722. Tue-Fri, Sun and bank holiday Mon 2-5pm, Sat 11am-5pm. Adult £3, children £2, under 6s free, family ticket £8.50 (two adults, four children).

4. A very big nose in Halifax

An impressively disgusting selection, as you'd hope from a museum especially for children. There's the unsubtle odour of farmyard manure, a rat in a house, a cupboard of skulls and snakes, the spiky bullrushes our forebears used instead of Andrex and a giant nose - stick your hand in a nostril, feel the giant's breathing and stroke his enormous nasal hairs.

· Eureka! The Museum for Children, Discovery Rd, Halifax, West Yorkshire HX1 2NE 01422 330012. Daily 10am-5pm. Adults and children, £5.50, under 3s free, family ticket £25 for five people.

5. Two heads, seven legs in Co Durham

A kind of Siamese-twin formation, a calf with two heads, two tails and three extra legs growing out of its back. Born locally in Teesdale, it was preserved, stuffed, mounted in a vitrine and exhibited at agricultural shows as 'one of the greatest curiosities known in the world'. In 1996, it came to London to appear in the Anglo-German art exhibition Private View , alongside Damien Hirst's Away from the Flock - a lamb in formaldehyde. Now it's back home.

· The Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle, Co Durham DL12 8NP 01833 690606. Daily, 11am-5pm. Adults £4, children £3, under 5s free, family ticket £12 for two adults, three children.

6. Human sacrifice in Bloomsbury

The 2,300-year-old preserved corpse known as Lindow Man was found beneath 2.5 metres of peat in Cheshire in 1984. The skull was cleaved with an axe. He was then strangled. His jugular vein was cut. Police are said to be looking for a gang of Druids, seen acting religiously in the vicinity of the murder scene.

· British Museum, Great Russell St, London WC1B 3DG, 020 7323 8000/7323 8299. Mon-Wed, Sat-Sun, 10am-5.30pm. Thu-Fri, 10am-8.30pm. Free.

7. Woman mutilated in Maidstone

Now a horrid midnight brown colour, she died 2,700 years ago in Egypt where they got her ready for eternity by scooping out her brain, packing her guts in jars, stuffing her with sawdust and wrapping her up in bandages. Then, in 1843, her gilded sarcophagus was opened by a Dr Birch. Finally came Dr Diamond who cut her open; the slashes he made are still clearly visible.

· Maidstone Museum & Bentlif Art Gallery, St Faith's St, Maidstone, Kent ME14 1LH, 01622 754497. Mon-Sat, 10am-5.15pm, Sun 11am-4pm. Free.

8. Something rotten in south-east London

The grim reality of Captain Oates's attempt to reach the South Pole. See the terrible sickness - skin falling from the body. See the frostbite - Oates kept his leg permanently frozen so he couldn't feel the pain of gangrene. Be glad you weren't there. Be very glad.

· National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London SE10 9NF, 020 8858 4422. Daily 10am-5pm. Adults, £7.50, under 16s and sixth-formers free.

9. Vile mouths in Portsmouth

Sailors are generally disgusting, we know. But they used to be even more disgusting. Until Lind's 1794 Royal Navy studies demonstrated the link between vitamin C deficiency and scurvy, they were plagued by the disease on long sea journeys. You want to see what scurvy looks like? Here's where you can. Pictures of scurvied mouths, full of gore and blood and sores. You'll never eat lunch in this museum again.

· Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth Historic Dockyard, Flagship Portsmouth, Portsmouth, Hampshire, 0239 286 1512. Daily 10am-5pm. Royal Naval Museum only: adult, £3.50, children £2, under 5s free, family ticket, £10.50. With HMS Victory: adults, £6.75, children £5, family £22.

10. Mud and death down Lambeth way

First World War troops suffered miserably. In the Trench Experience, you get a sense - and a whiff - of what they had to put up with. There's the mud, the smell, the duckboards and the prospect of imminent death.

· Imperial War Museum, Lambeth Rd, London SE1 6HZ, 020 7416 5000. Daily 10am-6pm. Adults £6.50, under 16s and over 60s free. Free after 4.30pm every day.