Strange exhibits

The Soap Lady. A massive colon. Foetal skeletons. Wax exhibits of eye diseases. These are all available for you to look at if you visit Philadelphia.

On the other hand, if you live in the UK, you can go to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford (which hosts a vast collection of general, if not always medical, ephemera) or even better, make an appointment to see the Wellcome Institute’s museum in London.

Actually, blogging about this has awakened memories of a lot of other ‘private’ museums around this country, including unreal, violent little collections laid out as real museums inside police stations, normally for police viewing only… if I remember enough, I’ll blog about them another time.

While you’re reaidng this, it might interest you to know that US police keep *all* evidence from *all* major crime–scenes — at least that’s how it appears. Recently, the Sheriff’s Office which dealt with the school shootings at Columbine laid out a one’day evidence exhibition for relatives and friends of the victims. Apparently everything was there. All the spent shotgun shells, for example. And that’s just the start.

Makes you wonder what else the police hold. The gun which killed Kennedy, for example? And if they throw these things out, where do they go? What happens to them? Could my dinner knife me made out of reconstituted steel from the World Trade Center, someday? And if they keep everything for ever, where does it go? I ask sincerely — it’s interesting and vital. If you know, please say.