I tend to have a pretty short attention span at history museums, unless they are one of two thing: interactive, or disturbing. The Mütter Museum, a museum of medical history, is definitely the latter, and so it's thankfully not the former. You would not want to interact with the kind of twisted things they've got on display, but they sure are fun to look at.

The Mütter is a museum inside of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, and it's claim to fame is a very large, cabinet-style display of "beautifully" preserved body parts, medical rarities, and horrifying instruments of torture medical tools.  The museum's goal is to help us understand our bodies and the history of medical diagnosis; they also seem to aim to teach us how terrifying bodies can be, and to make us want to throw up a little. They accomplish all of their goals.

Mutter Museum Photos
The Hyrtl Skull Collection
George Widman, 2009, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
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The Mütter began as a donation in 1858 from  Dr. Thomas Dent Mütter, a man who was very interested in furthering medical education, and thus left the college his large collection of horrible, atrocious things. You know, for education. If you're one of those people who falls into YouTube medical video rabbit holes, you are going to love it here.

Mutter Museum Photos
Compare and Contrast: Giant, Dwarf and Average Skeletons
George Widman, 2009, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
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The museum features a gift shop, of course, so if you're in the market for say, a jar of skin, a 70 lb. ovarian cyst, a cookie cutter in the shape of conjoined twins, or some soap that looks like a corpse, make sure to stop in on your way back from being violently ill in the bathroom. I'm really sellin' it to you, aren't I? Was the puking the clincher?

Mutter Museum Photos
The Main Gallery of Philadelphia's Mütter Museum
George Widman, 2009, for the Mütter Museum of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia
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