America's Weird Museums
Updated February 21, 2017 | Factmonster Staff 
Curious Collections
America's Weird museums
Arts & Entertainment | American History Gruesome | Medical Marvels | Curious Collections | Really Weird Science
Medical Marvels
Mutter Museum
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia's Mutter Museum comprises large and historically significant collections. These include hundreds of fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens, 10,000+ medical instruments and apparati, anatomical and pathological models, items of memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians, and medical illustrations. The Mutter Museum is also home to a plethora of what were once quaintly referred to as freaks.
Gawk at the plaster cast of famous siamese twins Chang and Eng and their actual attached liver(s?)! Fear the grotesque giant colon! Marvel at the grandaddy of swallowed-object collections! Wonder why the museum only has the thorax of John Wilkes Booth.
Personal favorites are the Muniz collection of trepanated Peruvian skulls and the "soap woman". The "soap woman" died of yellow fever and was buried in soil containing chemicals that turned her body to soap.
Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia's Mutter Museum comprises large and historically significant collections. These include hundreds of fluid-preserved anatomical and pathological specimens, 10,000+ medical instruments and apparati, anatomical and pathological models, items of memorabilia of famous scientists and physicians, and medical illustrations. The Mutter Museum is also home to a plethora of what were once quaintly referred to as freaks.
Gawk at the plaster cast of famous siamese twins Chang and Eng and their actual attached liver(s?)! Fear the grotesque giant colon! Marvel at the grandaddy of swallowed-object collections! Wonder why the museum only has the thorax of John Wilkes Booth.
Personal favorites are the Muniz collection of trepanated Peruvian skulls and the "soap woman". The "soap woman" died of yellow fever and was buried in soil containing chemicals that turned her body to soap.
National Museum of Health & Medicine
Washington, DC
The National Museum of Health & Medicine was founded by the US Army during the Civil War. It has a lot in common with Philadelphia's Mutter Museum. Both have extensive collections of educational and historically valuable objects. Both also have a collection of medical curiosities, and both have pieces of John Wilkes Booth (coincidently, the museum was originally housed in Ford's Theatre).
The military origin of the museum is evident in two exhibits. The Korean Conflict exhibit features an artificial kidney machine used in the field and the actual eyeglasses used by "Radar O'Reilly" on M*A*S*H. The small Civil War collection contains skeletons of soldiers as well as illustrations and photos of wounds.
Other highlights include live leeches, the world's most comprehensive collection of microscopes dating to the 1600s, "Anatifacts" such as a giant tumor and a stomach-shaped hairball, and bits and pieces of famous Americans—vertebrae of John Wilkes Booth and James Garfield, and the bullet that killed Lincoln.
Washington, DC
The National Museum of Health & Medicine was founded by the US Army during the Civil War. It has a lot in common with Philadelphia's Mutter Museum. Both have extensive collections of educational and historically valuable objects. Both also have a collection of medical curiosities, and both have pieces of John Wilkes Booth (coincidently, the museum was originally housed in Ford's Theatre).
The military origin of the museum is evident in two exhibits. The Korean Conflict exhibit features an artificial kidney machine used in the field and the actual eyeglasses used by "Radar O'Reilly" on M*A*S*H. The small Civil War collection contains skeletons of soldiers as well as illustrations and photos of wounds.
Other highlights include live leeches, the world's most comprehensive collection of microscopes dating to the 1600s, "Anatifacts" such as a giant tumor and a stomach-shaped hairball, and bits and pieces of famous Americans—vertebrae of John Wilkes Booth and James Garfield, and the bullet that killed Lincoln.
La Pharmacie Francaise / The New Orleans Pharmacy Museum
New Orleans, LA
Around the corner from the chaos of Bourbon Street you'll find the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum. The museum is the former apothecary shop of America's first licensed pharmacist (ca 1816). The mid-19th century apothecary shop has beautiful mahogany cabinets, packed with bottles of crude drugs, medicinal herbs, and rare patent medicines. Noteworthy remedies include marijuana, opium, digitalis, and mercury. Live leeches, "blood-letting" devices, prescription files, civil war surgical instruments, and cosmetics are also on exhibit. Behind the museum is a lovely little courtyard with a garden of medicinal herbs. It's a perfect place to relax before hitting Bourbon Street again. Pick up a leech t-shirt for mom on your way out.
New Orleans, LA
Around the corner from the chaos of Bourbon Street you'll find the New Orleans Pharmacy Museum. The museum is the former apothecary shop of America's first licensed pharmacist (ca 1816). The mid-19th century apothecary shop has beautiful mahogany cabinets, packed with bottles of crude drugs, medicinal herbs, and rare patent medicines. Noteworthy remedies include marijuana, opium, digitalis, and mercury. Live leeches, "blood-letting" devices, prescription files, civil war surgical instruments, and cosmetics are also on exhibit. Behind the museum is a lovely little courtyard with a garden of medicinal herbs. It's a perfect place to relax before hitting Bourbon Street again. Pick up a leech t-shirt for mom on your way out.
Glore Psychiatric Museum
St. Joseph, MO
The Glore Psychiatric Museum brings to life the glorious history of psychiatric treatment through diaromas, models, and reproductions. The earliest form of therapy seems to have been administered with a sharp stick or club. By the Middle Ages treatment encompassed public humiliation, dunking, blistering, the ever-popular bleeding, and burning at the stake. Fortunately, by the twentieth century, psychiatric treatment had evolved to include icy baths, tranquilizers, vibrating chairs, and electroshock therapy.
Some of the more interesting objects on display include the tranquilizer chair, a things-swallowed-by-patients exhibit, and a giant hamster wheel for especially energenic patients.
St. Joseph, MO
The Glore Psychiatric Museum brings to life the glorious history of psychiatric treatment through diaromas, models, and reproductions. The earliest form of therapy seems to have been administered with a sharp stick or club. By the Middle Ages treatment encompassed public humiliation, dunking, blistering, the ever-popular bleeding, and burning at the stake. Fortunately, by the twentieth century, psychiatric treatment had evolved to include icy baths, tranquilizers, vibrating chairs, and electroshock therapy.
Some of the more interesting objects on display include the tranquilizer chair, a things-swallowed-by-patients exhibit, and a giant hamster wheel for especially energenic patients.
Kalaupapa National Historical Park / Hansen's Disease Leper Colony
Kalaupapa, HI
Fortunately, you can learn about medical history in the great outdoors as well as dark musuems packed with jars. If you're ever on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, book a mule ride down to the Kaulapapa Hansen's Disease Leper Colony. The ride is not for the timid, as the mules take you down a steep cliff to the colony, some 1600 feet below.
The US Park Service conducts tours of the facility, which was created in 1865 when the Kingdom of Hawaii instituted a century-long policy of quarantine of persons afflicted with Hansen's disease. Perhaphs the most noteworthy resident was Belgian priest Father Damien, who treated the sick and acted as an advocate for the community until he died from complications of the disease. You can visit the chapel he was originally buried in. His body was actually moved to Belgium, but his right hand was sent back to Kalaupapa as a relic.
Kalaupapa, HI
Fortunately, you can learn about medical history in the great outdoors as well as dark musuems packed with jars. If you're ever on the Hawaiian island of Molokai, book a mule ride down to the Kaulapapa Hansen's Disease Leper Colony. The ride is not for the timid, as the mules take you down a steep cliff to the colony, some 1600 feet below.
The US Park Service conducts tours of the facility, which was created in 1865 when the Kingdom of Hawaii instituted a century-long policy of quarantine of persons afflicted with Hansen's disease. Perhaphs the most noteworthy resident was Belgian priest Father Damien, who treated the sick and acted as an advocate for the community until he died from complications of the disease. You can visit the chapel he was originally buried in. His body was actually moved to Belgium, but his right hand was sent back to Kalaupapa as a relic.
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