Philadelphia
Pennsylvania
October 2004
There are 27 columns in my Pennsylvania Series. Behold!
What’s normal? Statistics say that normal falls between 30 and 70 percent. The government agrees that Normal is a town of about 47 000 humans in Illinois. According to…
Hey, wait a minute. That’s not what I want to write about here.
What I want to write about here is a visit to a particular attraction, a place where many people are compelled to make yuck faces, a place where normal is not very normal.
Hortner and I motor an hour or so to Center City, Philadelphia, and then spend almost an hour driving around the block looking for the right parking space. We finally settle on a lot, parking fee ten bucks, no attendant. I think of paying Hortner $10 and having him pay me $10, but I don’t think that’s what the sign meant. Besides, that would have been $20. We pick the best parking spot in this unattended lot and walk in the direction toward the museum.
We climb the very impressive stone steps leading to the very impressive wooden door entry and there, carved in stone above the entryway, impressively, are the words College of Physicians. Wow! College of Physicians. Not just “physicians group” or “bunch of doctors” but an actual college. Whatever is to come, I am sure, will be impressive.
By the time we enter, we are both pretty thirsty. We decide to take care of our thirst now so we can enjoy the museum later. The woman at the front desk tells us, while she is on the telephone ordering a wristwatch, that not only do they not have any kind of drink available at the Museum, but we wouldn’t be allowed to bring any in if we had brought them ourselves. Okay, good luck with your wristwatch.
On our search for live-giving fluids, we pass by the Wonderland, a store displaying Disney characters and others in the window. Having no idea what we are getting into — remember we were looking for something to drink — we enter and find inside that the Wonderland is… not what we expected.
How many of you lived through the 60s? Perhaps you remember the black light posters, the tie-dye clothing, the drug paraphernalia. Oh my God! Walking into the Wonderland is like we just stepped back into the 60s. The only difference is that the four guys dressed in black working behind the counter are not stoned. Mmm, maybe. Hanging on the walls and under glass and on racks are gold plated roach clips, Jimi, Janis and Jim on a poster, colorful clothing, comic books (comix), incense, whipped cream chargers, bongs right out of Lewis Carroll — the place is named Wonderland — and back in the corner, an impressive display of glass dildos and other devices that vibrated, not for the kids. I admit, this is not the first head shop Hortner and I have visited, but it is the most surprising.
The Disney characters inside the store are engaged with one another in various anatomical poses, possibly positions one can achieve only if one is a duck, or a mouse or a dog.
Next to the Wonderland is a door leading to basement steps. Over the door is a sign reading…
THE PLEASURE CHEST
We do not go there.
On our walk back to the museum, we spy a Wawa supermarket. Wawa. They have bottled drinks on display.
Back to the Mütter, the museum we came to see. After winding our way past the “no drinks” lady and through descriptions of the medical difficulties that challenged the Lewis & Clark Expedition, we finally make it to the current exhibit of interest: Artifacts on display here that have been described as “medical monstrosities,” “curiosities of the human form,” pathological specimens,” “freaks” and “monsters.” They include descriptions, photos, drawings and depictions of Monosymmetric Cephalo-thoracopagus, a type of conjoined twins and Fibro-dysplasia Ossificans Progressiva, a condition in which bone grows where muscle and other soft tissue is supposed to be. Also on display are sliced sections of the human head. We are permitted no photos.
I’m guessing that THE PLEASURE CHEST offers bodies of a different variety, attractive for other reasons.
In the museum, displays of interest include the skeleton of one of the world’s tallest humans next to a skeleton of one of the world’s shortest humans. The short one, incidentally, is noted to have lived in a brothel. (No doubt shopped at the Wonderland.)
How about the more than 2000 swallowed items? Bones, coins, nuts, seeds, shells and “other vegetal substances.” Also, “dental material.”
You’ve heard of Chang and Eng? Twins from Siam, now Thailand, the original Siamese Twins. These days, folks with this fate are called “conjoined twins” and they are classified into any of several different categories: Craniopagus are twins joined at the top of the head or skull; Thoracopagus, the most common form of conjoined twins, share part of the chest wall, possibly including a shared heart; Pygopagus, who are likely positioned back-to-back and are connected at the tushie; Ischiopagus, joined at the coccyx and sacrum; Omphalopagus, connected from the waist to the lower breastbone; and Dicephalus, the very rare type of conjoined twins, who have one body with two separate heads and necks.
There are other classifications of conjoined twins, including the type typified by Chang and Eng. They were xiphopagus twins, joined by a small band of cartilage at the sternum. Chang and Eng’s livers were fused too and, really, are on display in a tub in the Mütter Museum. We saw it… them…
Just over here is a tumor removed from the jaw of Grover Cleveland. While as the 22nd or 24th president of the United States, Cleveland underwent his surgery in secret; the populace knew nothing of it. Imagine that today. And here it is before us, the presidential tumor, floating in a small jar. We don’t know if this was a first term or second term tumor.
I won’t spend too much time on this next one but do you remember the sand worms from Frank Herbert’s Dune? On display in a glass case is something that looks just like the sand worms only smaller, indoor-room-sized. Still, it’s a large intestine, from a human, only much larger, a whole lot larger. By a lot. Very.
Fascinating as it is, I am not thrilled by the exhibit called “The Soap Woman.” The Soap Woman is the body of a woman who died of Yellow Fever and was buried in soil that had just the right chemical makeup to turn her into soap. The Smithsonian Institute has a Soap Man exhibit, apparently her companion in the ground in the state of morte.
On one wall is the most impressive collection of human skulls I have ever seen. In all honesty, this is the only collection of human skulls I have ever seen. There must be 150 of ‘em, all labeled and most of them smiling. You know how skulls are.
In another display case are wax models of various diseases in and of the head and face, not the sort of thing you would desire to touch with your fingers. Hortner is a licensed medical doctor and it is fun for me to ask him, “Ever seen this in the office? Have you ever treated this?” Most of the time his answer is “No.” Sometimes it is, “Hell, no!” For some of us, these depictions are the stuff of nightmares. That is, the ones of us who are normal.
It’s not easy being normal. I’ve heard that many of the displays here have a profound effect on normal living human organisms; some visitors are reported to sweat profusely, change the color of their complexion, make retching sounds, become a bit wobbly, even to have their digestive tracts begin to work opposite of the usual direction.
By now, after viewing all these exhibits, we have built up quite a hunger. Stopping at one of probably 60 000 Italian sub shops in the City of Brotherly Love, we go for the local cuisine, the Philly Cheese Steak.
Picking our teeth after our meal, we walk back toward our perfect parking spot: a) right around the corner from the Museum, b) no attendant to collect our ten bucks and c) the impossibility of parking in Center City for free, and we did! It could be the best day of my life (probably not.) Adjacent to the lot, we pass another purveyor of human extremism. Unlike the Wonderland which keeps certain goods in the back corner of the store, this is a shop advertising right in the window the goods to be found inside. These goods, as the window proclaims, are rated XXX. I am amused by the playoff of these two exhibitions, the Mütter and the triple X, I believe medically known as pornographicus delectus. What’s normal?