Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Museums as Morgues

Well, I am back from Boston. I know, you didn't know I was going to Boston. Well, I did, and let me tell you, it was crazy. If by crazy, you mean a calm trip to visit my brother and sister-in-law with my mom. It actually was pretty pleasant. We had the most gorgeous weather. And, due to a fortuitous change in plans, Spyboy was in DC to watch Cassie. Only it wasn't so much a change in plans as me realizing that I had the date wrong in my head for the past three months. But yes. I'd only been to Boston twice in the four years since my brother moved there and I hadn't done too many tourist things those times. So this time, I went on a duck tour. Sadly my brother and his wife had to work. The tour guide kept calling me "DC" and decided I secretly worked for Greenpeace, but didn't want to admit it because there were French on the boat. But there really weren't French on the boat; I think he just got confused.

We also went to the Science Museum because a.it was on my brother's way in to work, so it was easy to get to and b. my mom wanted to see this gross body exhibit. She thought it was cool. I think it is gross and freaky and repulsive. (I went and saw butterflies while she was in it.) See, the exhibit is an exhibit of cadavers. Some artist figured out how to preserve bodies by putting some kind of plastic coating on them. So he takes skin off of most of them, puts them in to strange positions (like skiing or yoga), and coats them. It enables you to see how the muscles work in the body. There were also organs and skeletons and fetuses. The pictures made me a little sick. Otherwise I'd link to the website. But I'd have to look at it and that I just don't want to do. And my mom kept talking about it which made me a little sick. And sad. Because while the adults signed a form and said it was okay. But the kids? And it means the kids had to die. And they had a five-month pregnant woman. It just makes me sad.

3 comments:

Liberal Banana said...

Oh geez, that exhibit sounds disgusting. Fine for medical students maybe but YIKES. It especially freaks me out because I just read Devil in the White City which is about the World's Fair in 1893 and a serial killer who kept killing (mainly) women. He'd use them for his own "fun" medical research like that and then...I'll spare you the details. Psychopath though.

Anonymous said...

Is that the museum of medical odities? That one is crazy creepy, but I'd love to see it.

Rebecca said...

liberalbanana: Yeah, I don't think I'll be reading that book anytime soon. It might very well make me sick.

Jess: No, this is just the regular science museum. It's actually a pretty cool museum. I'm not sure if this exhibit is going to travel, but it's definitely not permanent there. So it might be coming to Chicago. There's another one in Atlanta, too. And there's a medical oddities' museum in Oxford. My friend went to see it; said it was majorly bizarre.