The Hawk

Issue date: 4/23/08 Section: Features

The Mutter Museum looks unassuming enough from the outside.

On an overcast March afternoon in Center City Philadelphia, the Mütter Museum, with its stately columns, stands solemn and unassuming. Wedged between several buildings on 22nd Street, it sits only yards away from the bustling, traffic-filled streets of Chestnut and Market, the museum entrance masking the surprises within.

One would assume that the museum would be devoid of tourists on this afternoon, considering the monsoon-like downpour that occurred for several hours. However, the Mütter Museum is filled with people, eager to see the medical oddities that line the walls.

I am not sure when I first regretted eating my lunch, a hearty serving of my grandmother's leftover mac and cheese. Was it the Hyrtl Skull Collection stored in glass cases filled with skulls representing nationalities from all over the world? The decomposing corpse? Maybe the gangrene hand?

None of the above actually. It was most likely the halved brains, with ears and eyelashes still attached, displayed so visitors could view what our noggins really look like when we're no longer able to use them.

My grandfather, a former pathologist, well accustomed to performing autopsies on corpses, was probably a poor choice to bring with me if I didn't want to learn even gorier details about what I was seeing.

For $8 with your student ID, or $12 without, you can tour this menagerie of interesting and unique specimens while enjoying the historic background of the museum as well.

Since 1858, when Thomas Dent Mütter first opened up his distinctive collection to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, the Mütter Museum has served as a wealth of scientific information and mind-boggling specimens that even those without an M.D. can enjoy.

The fascinating exhibits are housed in several rooms that resemble everything from an art exhibit to an old fashioned personal library.

Saunter around the photographic exhibit or read about past presidents' diseases and medical procedures. There is even a display discussing modern diseases that afflict us now.

The real treat (if "treat" is the right word) is the Upper and Lower Gallery. There the tourist can find the most intriguing, unbelievable, and sometimes revolting specimens. The cast of Siamese twins Chang and Eng, joined by the liver, sits in the middle of the Lower Gallery. A nearby glass cylinder holds a hairball the size of a tennis ball. In the center of the room sits the museum's infamous giant colon, with the circumference of a basketball.

In addition to the brain specimens is the wax face collection, complete with every skin disease imaginable.

"A lot of these are due to syphilis," my companion informed me. Thanks, Grandpop, TMI (too much information).

Picking up the pace, I hoped that my grandfather would get the picture. Unfortunately, it seemed as if he would have been content to look at diseased organs all day. Shooting a glance at the gangrene-covered hand and reflecting on my queasy stomach, I prayed for an early departure.

We passed by some more oddities: a human horn protruding from the forehead of a wax figure, a tapeworm whose job as a human parasite made my stomach ache, a display case filled with malformed human fetuses that I briskly jogged by.

A couple of skulls, and skin diseases later, deliverance arrived with the appearance of the exit sign. Soon, we were strolling down 22nd street, the sun on our backs, the shrunken heads in a glass case smiling after us.

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