After discovering the Mütter Museum's website at the end of last class (and recovering from my viserceral reactions to some of the images on that page...) I remembered that this isn't the first time I've heard of a medical oddities museum.
6.5 years ago, when studying abroad in Tokyo, I journeyed with a few friends to the Meguro Parasitological Museum (from their website: "Try to think about parasites without a feeling of fear, and take the time to learn about their wonderful world of the Parasites.")
Friends!
Parasites!
In the 1950s, the general practitioner Satoru Kamegi donated his extensive private collection of parasites to form a small special collections museum. If memory serves, Kamegi had operated on soldiers during wartime, many of whom had been living in squalid environments and acquired large, thriving parasites. He created the collection while helping countless people. The collection contains the longest preserved tapeworm in the world -- 8.8 meters long. I saw it. It was gross.
In thinking about the Meguro Parasitological Museum and the Mütter Museum, I feel that these kinds of special collections have enormous value for all of us. We often only understand our bodies, our health, and our range of functioning in the terms of empowered social institutions that want to tell a single story of function and dysfunction. Having something like a museum of parasites, while totally gross!, helps uncover some of the gruesome realities of war and poverty. Similarly, our understanding of political figures and history so rarely engages the embodied reality of people - the disease they struggled with, the disabilities that shaped their relationship to the world. It may be uncomfortable to experience a giant tapeworm in a museum, but it also helps us collectively expand our understanding of what happens in bodies in the world.
I guess personally as somebody who's fairly squeamish and doesn't really like horror moves or gross-out humor at all, I find this kind of thing hard - but also, again, helpful in a weird way of understanding other people better. I actually had a really cute anime-y tapeworm keychain that I got at the museum and had on my phone for years. But that gets into representations and cuteness and Japanese culture, which is a whole other thing!
It's genuinely fascinating that special collections can play this kind of role, and I wonder what other work is being done in medical special collections in particular.
Sources:
http://www.kiseichu.org/Pages/english.aspx
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2001/03/11/national/strange-world-of-parasites-on-display/#.V_PInrwrK2w
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/meguro-parasitological-museum
http://muttermuseum.org/
I love when exposure to an idea or new topic draws us to make a memory and make web like connections - true librarian spirit! This museum in Tokyo is pretty gnarly with it's displayed/preserved parasite collection, but an awesome find for anyone interested in the odd and unique. May I recommend another museum of a similar nature? If you every find yourself in Chicago, I would swing by the Museum of Surgical Science. It has all sort of medical oddities (and historical surgical equipment) and is quite fascinating - though not for the squeamish. Plus it's in this beautiful old building right on the lakefront! Check it out: https://imss.org
ReplyDeleteCome on Z, I'm trying to eat my lunch! I knew I shouldn't have clicked when I saw the title :)
ReplyDeleteYour points about the value of research and its value in expressing the true affects of war are spot on. Difficult to stomach for someone squeamish like me, but an important collection nonetheless.
I hate to admit this but as a preteen I developed a strong fear that I was infested with parasites. :(
ReplyDeleteI think part of this was due to that television show, "Monsters inside Me," which my family watched frequently. I would go online and google different pictures of them and read on wikipedia and different websites. I eventually went to the weird side of Youtube and watched plenty of disgusting videos of people supposedly passing huge worms and other creatures from their bodies. I get squeamish thinking about it now but I was really obsessed with it for awhile.
That being said, I agree wholeheartedly with you about the value of specialized museums. While they may not be the reality for us as individuals or a topic that we want to delve into ourselves, they still have value because they represent and speak to someone's reality.