I know plenty of crazies who should be locked away and never heard from again. Or better yet, maybe I can take all my favorite nutcases under false pretenses to the Stephen Beaumount Museum of Mental Health in England, and, you know, just leave them there. This place tells the...
Love paying a weekly visit to your shrink? Well, then…the Glore Psychiatric Museum in St. Joseph, Missouri sounds like it is right up your dysfunctional alley. It starts with the first therapy methods, when sharp sticks or a club were used, and goes to Middle Age treatments involving public humiliation...
“Edgar Allan Poe (right), who spent time at the Academy of Natural Sciences doing research on mollusks; John Leidy, a young medical student (center); and Samuel George Morton, a physician and naturalist, at the Academy’s new building at Broad and Samson Streets in Philadelphia during the winter of 1842-43. This...
One of the many reasons why I’ll never have a baby… Seen at France’s largest Anatomy Museum, Musée Orfila at the Université Paris Descartes. Besides the Opération de la Cesarienne (wax model of Caesarean section), you’ll find thousands of other wax anatomical models, both human and animal. Um, aren’t humans...
Fifteen years ago today, Dolly the Sheep was born. Now stuffed and on display at the Edinburgh Museum, Dolly began her life at the Roslin Institute as a cell from a sheep donor’s mammary gland, hence the name. You might have heard of the famously busty country western singer Dolly...
Stomach Contents, (c. 1929) Glore Psychiatric Museum, St. Joseph, MO One of the Glore Museum’s most popular exhibits is the result of a surgery in which 1,446 items were removed from a female patient’s stomach. Looks like she was busy putting nails and pins in her breakfast. I wrote about...
Edinburgh Museum of Childhood, Scotland “The Museum of Childhood collection was founded by Patrick Murray, a passionate collector of toys and childhood objects who was also an Edinburgh Town Councillor. Objects in the collection span the 18th to 21st centuries…with large collections of toys, games, crafts and hobby items, from...
Ever had a bad foot? Limps and broken legs were once celebrated at the Museum of Crutches in Azerbaijan (don’t ask me where this is…I’m an American). The museum is now closed, but knowing it once existed makes me happy. Located in the renowned health resort town of Naphthalan (or...
These creepy crawlies got nothing on the thousands of dust mites that live in your pillowcase and bedsheets. Sweet dreams. Don’t let the bed bugs bite.
About two years ago the Grant Museum of Zoology, the only remaining university zoological museum in London, converted an old office/storeroom into a beautiful back-lit cave displaying 2,323 of the tiniest specimens in its collection. The slides show whole small animals (don’t forget that 95% of known animal species are...
