Musings
an Online Journal of Sorts

By Alyce Wilson

Inside the Mutter Museum, from their site

Sunday was Dad's last day in town. He came over to our place after he checked out of the hotel and hung around with The Gryphon while I finished an assignment. We gave him the brief tour of the place. He said it had improved greatly since he saw it, which was the very weekend we were moving in last year.

Then we all piled into my car, Moondance, and drove into Center City to the Mutter Museum.

The museum wasn't quite what I expected. I thought there would be more educational exhibits. There were some, which were on the first floor, all done within the past 10 years. There was a special exhibit about medicine during Benjamin Franklin's day, and there was also an exhibit about 10 years old, about the health of American presidents. It finished with President Clinton and had apparently been completed in about 1996.

In the display cases around the railing that led down to the second floor, there was an exhibit about 10 years old about conjoined twins. I know it was from about 10 years ago because it ended with some newspaper clippings from that time.

Another case contained a history of the Mutter Museum, explaining how it was founded as a teaching tool and talking about the different types of specimens contained therein. You weren't allowed to take photos, partly because they take seriously the idea of respecting the people who had donated their bodies to science and thus made the museum possible.

There was also an exhibit about the so-called "Soap Lady," a body that had supposedly been turned completely into a soap-like substance while buried. They have discovered some new things about her from using an X-ray.

Downstairs, we were met mostly with cases containing specimens. They were either actual specimens, preserved in liquid or dried, or they were wax replicas made to look like wet specimens.

The museum began as a teaching tool for doctors, and there were a number of high school aged students who might have been from a science class and seemed fascinated. Dad told me that when he was in medical school, he visited the museum then, as well.

I did expect the specimens but expected more information. They mainly contained labels of what they represented. There were some really disturbing things in there, too, like a collection of fetal skeletons from four months of development on up, and even the skeleton of two babies born conjoined at the head. There was also an extremely large colon from a guy who had a disease that enlarged his intestinal track.

It was a little strange to be going out to eat right after the museum; it didn't exactly whet my appetite. But Dad wanted to get on the road, so we walked around to find a place. Dad didn't have any preferences, but there were a lot of nearby restaurants. Unfortunately, it was so early that some of favorite places, like Genji and the Continental, weren't yet open.

We walked past Rittenhouse Square, but most of the restaurants there were pretty pricey, so we kept walking. We finally had some luck on Walnut Street, where we found a restaurant that was both open and in our price range, the Chinese restaurant Wok. We decided to give it a shot.

They had china plates with their name emblazoned on them, which I thought was cool.

We all started with a hot and sour soup, which was, indeed hot and had my dad and I in coughing fits. I followed it up with the Mango Chicken, which was good. They gave me a lot, so I had half of it boxed up.

Dad said we were making good time, but he actually got on the road about an hour later than he'd intended. He was interested to see that we'd parked near Rittenhouse Square, which we'd just seen documented in the Robert Downey Sr. movie, Rittenhouse Square. There was still some art there, left over from an event on Saturday. I suggested we go look at it, but Dad declined because he had to get home. We viewed it as well as we could from a distance.

It's always a little sad when one of my family members goes home, although this was a nice long visit, longer than we normally seen anyone from my family. We wished him safe travels and told him to call us when he got home.

As we were settling in for a quiet evening, we got one call after another. One call came from my sister, who had been bitten by her cat while trying to bathe him after he'd gotten especially filthy from running around outside. She wanted Dad for medical advice, and I told her he'd be home around 10 p.m.

Then we got a call from The Dormouse, who had just flown in from an anime convention in Chicago and a visit to The Court Wizard. He needed a ride back to his apartment from 30th Street Station, so we drove in and picked him up.

When we got back, we were just starting to watch the movie Crash when my mom called up, also looking for Dad. She needed to borrow his second car, because she got into an accident at the post office.

So it was kind of an unnerving evening. Fortunately, the last call of the night was Dad calling to say he'd arrived safely home.

More from Dad's visit:

May 5, 2006 - Fun with Fred

May 8, 2006 - Physician Frivolity

May 9, 2006 - Dinner with Dad

Copyright 2006 by Alyce Wilson

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