On Saturday, October 29, there was a trip to the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia. The trip was exciting and very educational. While the museum itself was small, the exhibits themselves were fascinating. On the topmost floor were the skulls of different creatures: bears, tigers, domestic cats, dogs, and different monkeys and apes. There was also a wall of human skulls staring at visitors, each with a little card stating the name of the person who the skull belonged to, their race, their gender, their occupation and how they died.

On the bottom floor there was a room with the skeleton of a 7’6” man towering over the visitors. There was also a colon that weighed 40 pounds, and the exhibit showed a picture of the man where it came from. Across the room was a corset, a popular fashion statement for women On either side of the corset were the skeletons of two women, their rib cages flattened severely from long term use of the item. There was also a set of drawers filled with things that people swallowed. Everything from dentures, to safety pins, to bottle caps, to coins, to buttons was in there. There was also an ovarian cyst that weighed 70 pounds. Lining the walls were fetuses that were deformed and died in the womb.

Overall, the trip was very fun and informative. The museum was interesting even though it was smaller than most other museums. Because it was the Day of the Dead, there were little activities on the side that included making paper flowers, and decorating skull cookies. The only problem was something that was out of human control, the weather. It was snowing, hailing, and was too cold for anyone to go anywhere too far to eat or to explore the city. Those that did came back shivering and soaking wet, while the rest of the students huddled in the museum