I just returned from a research trip to Philadelphia, where, among other things, I visited the Mutter Museum. It was founded in 1863, and has been at its present location, at The College of Physicians, since 1909. The mission of the museum, as stated on their website : The Mütter Museum helps the public appreciate the mysteries and beauty of the human body while understanding the history of diagnosis and treatment of disease.The museum houses thousands of osteological specimens, wet specimens, and wax models. I think of myself as having a pretty strong constitution when it comes to this sort of thing, but even I felt a little queasy after half an hour of eight-foot-long engorged colons and forty-pound scrotal tumors. You feel a little . . . voyeuristic. Perhaps you’ll be relieved to know that visitors are not allowed to take pictures inside, so you’ll be spared the visuals on these.

Once I focused on what I’d come to see—the exhibit about Vesalius (I’ve blogged about him here), the skull showing the ravages of tertiary syphilis, the display on the use of anesthesia in the Civil War, and the Benjamin Rush memorial medicinal garden, I felt, well, right as rain again.

Rush was a signer of the Declaration and helped found The College of Physicians of Philadelphia in 1787. Here’s the pretty garden with no dead people parts in it: