[ Article crossposted from alt.tasteless ]
[ Author was Anne Threston ]
[ Posted on 25 Apr 1995 15:13:53 -0600 ]
I was back east a couple of weeks ago; to see the family, the squeeze, and
some of the fine members of this newsgroup. One of the a.t. excursions
was to Philadelphia, to meet Mitch Marmel (gunsmith to the stars) and
go to the Mutter Museum.
I had never been there, though I was mugged across the street from it
about 12 years ago. Mitch recommended it highly as an outstanding example
of tastelessness, so who was I to say no. It's the museum for the College
of Physicians, and as far as I can tell is a shrine to all that we hold
dear. It's a marvelous collection of various skeletons, mummies, pickled
fetuses, distended intestines, wax models of hideous facial sores, and
a vast collection of Things Swallowed and Inhaled. Some highlights:
* The Soap Lady- The remains of a woman who, due to the nature of her
decomposition, turned into a soap-like substance when she decayed.
Grey, greasy, somewhat identifiable as human.
* The skeleton of a three-y.o. who died of the results of hydrocephalia.
Normal sized body, huge head, with a giant blow-hole in the top of the
skull where the excess cranial pressure was finally, and fatally, released.
* The skeleton of a dwarf prostitute. She got pregnant, and was too tiny
to deliver her child, so the attending physician used a nifty tool (also
displayed) to crush the infant's skull, in an attempt to remove it from
her without causing further trauma to the mother. Alas, the baby-mashing
was unsuccessful, and both mother and child died.
* Lots of fetus kits- tiny fetal skeletons neatly arranged in velvet-
lined boxes. Also many jars of pickled siamese-twins-gone-horribly-awry.
Kind of looked like a cross between fetal whales and pickled pigs feet,
but with three or more heads. Yummy.
* The colon of the guy who died because he was full of shit. Literally.
50 lbs. of shit was found in his colon during his autopsy. There was
a photo of him with a fantastically enlarged belly, in the case next
to his straw-stuffed fantastically enlarged colon. An a.t. shrine, if
ever there was one.
* A splendid collection of Things Swallowed and Inhaled. Meticulously
catalogued, displayed in a hundred or so glass-topped drawers. Needles,
bullets, seeds, and many, many decayed, moldy lumps of meat.
* An amazing collection of wax models of various facial diseases. Pus-
filled nodules distending eyelids, syphilis-induced craters where
eye and nose used to be, chancres of every sort, rendered in all their
pustulent, liquid-oozing glory.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the picture. Unfortunately,
their souvenir offerings are rather limited, but they do publish a
truly lovely calender; the current one features the hydrocephalic
skeleton, and a nifty bust of a woman with a hideously large growth on
her neck, among other treasures from the collection.
And all of this yummy medical tastelessness for $2.00 admission. If
you're in Philadelphia, Anne-Bob sez check it out.
Anne
--
"Every now and then she brings me to the brink of orgasm and then smacks
me on the dick with a waffle iron. My cock is starting to look like
a pizzelle."
C. Krusen
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Subject: Re: A truly tasteless museum
From: jch9334@is2.nyu.edu (Kid Ginsu)
For a year a good friend lived 100 feet from the mutter museum. YOU MUST
CHECK THIS THING OUT! IT"S EVERYTHING THE ABOVE POST SAYS AND MORE!
God, where else can you see skeletons of siamese twins, even aborted
siamese twin fetuses? Plus, get to see actual TUMORS as big as your
SKULL! That's the Mutter Museum, 25th and Chestnut, PHILADELPHIA!
Kid Ginsu
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Subject: Re: A truly tasteless museum
From: pdh@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Peter Harris)
You want to go to a tasteless museum ?
Check this out, from an article in Fortean Times :-
"Holland's preoccupation with faeces is demonstrated by
the huge success of an exhibition in Leeuwarden's Natural
History Museum entitled 'Pooh', which opened last autumn.
Highlights include fossilised mammoth turds, plastic
diarrhoea,'scratch-and-sniff' panels and the contents of
a Victorian cesspit. The hind quarters of various stuffed
mammals can be compared with the manure they produce.
Staff dressed as lavatory attendants and wearing earrings
made of dried animal droppings greet visitors and show
them around displays on Pooh and Language, Pooh Through
History, Pooh and Nappies and Pooh and Your Health"
Go there. I want to see a report.
--
[] Peter Harris, Optoelectronics Network Supervisor, Southampton University []
"Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of the pox !"
"That, my Lord, depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress"
John Wilkes to The Earl of Sandwich, Parliament, November 1763
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Subject: Re: A truly tasteless museum
From: sphinx1@ix.netcom.com (Sphinx Drummond)
WOW!!! Finally a place to display my art. About six years ago, I was
reaching real hard for a "conceptual" piece that I could get N.E.A.
funding for. Since *pee* was already taken I decided to use poop. I
came up with a "Month of Turds." I had taken a Polyproid photo of a
downward view into the commode, of my turds, for each day of the month.
At the end of the month (March '89) I made a large calendar and fit
each photo onto it's cooresponding day. Next to each photo, in the
things to do space, I made a list of the things I had eaten that day,
so one could get an idea of the next day's composhition. Needless to
say, the N.E.A. wimps considered my works, too controversial. They said
the public is just now beginning to accept things like pee and fist
fucking as art but is not ready yet for poop.
Leave it to those forward thinking Dutch to be the first to accept poop
as a true art form. I'm gonna donate "Month of Turds" to Leeuwarden's
Natural History Museum in hopes that they can include it in their
exhibition of "Pooh." I hope I'm not too late.
Sphinx
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