Mütter Museum Just Plain Sick and Wrong

This Saturday, Nick, Rachel and I went to the Mütter Museum, a place filled with medical curiousities such as Chang and Eng's liver, dozens of skulls, wax models of various skin and eye diseases, old medical instruments, skeletons of dwarves and giants, brains in jars and the like. The collection began in the 19th Century, and it was interesting to look at the collection from that point of view (revealing the fascinations and cultural mores of a past era), but on the whole I found the experience stomach-turning and ghoulish. I cannot recommend it to anyone but Shelley Jackson, who is fascinated by such things and would find the museum rife with narrative potential. It just made me feel sick and kind of dirty. The worst part was that, as we left the main rooms of the museum, some caterers were prepping for a reception — hor d'houvres involving some kind of raw meat. Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! In spite of my repulsion, I can't avoid a kind of gallows humor in that type of situation, and I apologize if my jokes about sushi near the brain cabinet were in poor taste.