Mütter Museum

Medical wonders in an architectural gem

The Mutter Museum Credit: B. Krist for GPTMC

Description

The Experience

The Mütter Museum is a riveting storehouse for the anatomically strange. The Museum’s display of 20,000 provocative items is designed to give a beneath-the-surface perspective of what physicians study — and it’s not always pretty.

Inside the Museum, you’ll find a wide smattering of abnormal body parts preserved in fluid. You’ll encounter skeletal formations — like that of a 7’6” man — that don’t seem quite possible. Diseased and enlarged organs are tastefully displayed within glass-encased oak frames.

For the sake of comparison, illustrations of normal anatomical formations are cast in wax, plaster and papier mâché throughout the museum.

Connections to the famous include Marie Curie’s electrometer, Dr. Benjamin Rush’s medicine chest and, most spectacularly, the death cast of Chang and Eng, the original “Siamese Twins,” whose autopsy was performed in the museum.

History

Philadelphia physician Thomas Mütter donated $30,000 and his 1,700-item personal museum of bones, plaster casts, medical illustrations and other pathological artifacts to the College of Physicians of Philadelphia. The College has continued to add to the collection since it opened as a museum in 1863.

The Mütter collection moved into its current building, which boasts grand marble and oak halls, in 1908.