If you’re embarrassed by your all-too-human desire to gawk at atrocities and anomalies, perhaps you’d enjoy Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia’s collection of medical abnormalities is housed in a stately, sober environ that feel more like a 19th century academic institution than a carnival freak show tent, but rest assured, the place is crammed with freaks and freakiness. Among its huge collection of medical esoteria is the thorax of John Wilkes Boothe, the “Hyrtl Skull Collection,” a “large collection of conjoined fetal specimens” (including the liver of the original “Siamese twins,” Chang and Eng), thousands of objects that people swallowed, and the amazing 9-foot long “megacolon.”
To the Mütter’s credit, the place does not shy away from or apologize for the “would you look at this 74-pound ovarian cyst!” appeal of its strange exhibits. It leans into the macabre instead—its YouTube channel is awesome and active, and you can buy a plushie of the megacolon—and in so doing uses morbid curiosity to educate. As its website exhorts us: “Become disturbingly informed.”
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