If you haven’t noticed already, I’m a bit fascinated with weird body stuff, which many museums are happy to display for sick and twisted people like me. At the Royal College of Surgeons in London, the Hunterian Museum displays an actual rectum cut from the corpse of the Bishop of Durham, Thomas Thurlow (1737-1791). It shows the effects of both hemorrhoids and bowel cancer. The patient had suffered from some time with bowel problems, which was believed to be piles. What’s piles? It’s just the historic name for hemorrhoids. Through a rectal examination (fun fun) by the man who actually founded the museum (Dr. John Hunter, a surgeon who collected medical memorabilia), it was determined that Thurlow had an incurable tumour, which he died from 10 months later. At least he lives on, well, part of him anyway.
Hunterian Museum, London, England
