Anyone been to the Mutter Museum in Philly?

[kaiju]

The Kaiju family is off to Philadelphia and is reviewing the tourist attractions. The two young kaijus are boys, 10 and 8 morbidly curious, as you would expect. They’ve have seen the special on Discovery or the Travel channel, listing the creepiest places on earth. They want to go to the Mutter Museum.

Now I’m the kind of mother who wants to provide a broad education for the young’uns. And everyone sees the Liberty Bell, but how many kids get to see a really big tumor in a jar? But I understand that this is a museum at a teaching hospital, and not a sideshow. There will not be elephant man postcards and Siamese Twin keychains. Or will there? I also don’t want to go somewhere that’s going to make us all gag.

So, I’m polling the Dopers. Is this place fun for the whole family, or should we stick to traditional attractions?

[Eve]

My 8th-grade science teacher (a sick little cookie) took my class there, and it has remained hovering in my mind ever since. The jars full of deformed fetuses! The Big Wall of Eye Diseases! The Soap Woman, and the Huge Colon! I heartily admire your kids’ taste in vacation sights. They will probably enjoy the Giant Creepy Walk-Thru Heart at the Franklin Institute, too. Here is a Mutter link; I don’t know if the museum is open to individual gawkers anymore:

Mutter Museum, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

[Skywatcher]

Here’s what DigitalCity says:

It’s a museum filled with bottled jars, scientific oddities, contraptions and medical doo- hickeys and whatnots. Or, as they put it, “fluid- preserved anatomical and pathological specimens.” Adding, literally, to the ambience is a pervasive, slightly subtle, musky scent. Blame the metal jars and liquids that are more than a century old; a whole place filled with dead objects can’t be expected to be all that fresh. Appetizing? Not really. Morbid? Weird? Yucky? Sometimes. But the medical curiosities are treated just so, with the detachment and clinical respect that scientists muster even when other people act, like, well people. – Elva Ramirez

[Olentzero]

I have not been there.

Valkyrie, aka Mrs. O, has been there.

Valkyrie is a nurse. She has worked in hospitals and seen some pretty graphic stuff.

And she left the Mutter Museum more than slightly nauseous.

I’m on the phone with her now, and she doesn’t think it may be generally appropriate for kids that age 'cos it’s not really geared towards them. If they have a high tolerance for really freaky shit, then they might like it. But if they get nightmares fairly easily, this is not the place to go.

[Skywatcher]

Hit “submit” by accident. I meant to add that you might want to try The Academy of Natural Sciences instead.

When that evening sun goes down, most humans head straight for home. But many animals are only getting their day started. More than two-thirds of mammals in the forest are nocturnal, rarely seen by the likes of us. In the Dark is an amazing exhibit that casts some light on the teeming life that escapes our eyes.

The five divisions of the show look into different dim situations, accurately re-creating some famous areas (such as the Great Smoky Mountains), and some that have only recently been discovered (the immense Movile cave in Romania). Computer games, mechanical displays, chemical experiments, specimens and models give visitors the impression that they’ve traveled to these inapproachable places. Learn how fireflies talk to each other, and see how organisms in the dark depths of the ocean create their own light. Worms, moles, millipedes and their cohorts surface to show what lurks beneath the all-American lawn.

Another fascinating segment studies the uneasy relationship humans have with the unseen world. Traditionally, we have feared and reviled nocturnal creatures such as bats and owls, associating them with evil and death. Yet we have also used technology to create tools like radar and sonar that animals developed through biological necessity. This exhibit is a first step in carrying us past fear of the dark and opening our eyes to the next great discovery.

[gallows_fodder]

I was there a couple of years ago…I don’t know if kids that age could handle it without first discussing the nature of what they were about to see with an adult. A lot of the specimens are plastic models, but they’re very realistic.

I found myself leaving the museum in good spirits, thanking God that I had no deformities, but my best friend left very depressed and disturbed. (We were both 21 at the time, FWIW.) Are your boys sensitive?

Did you see the TV special on the museum? Did it show the museum’s collections in detail?

[Ethilrist]

Well, jarbabyj was wearing a “Mutter” t-shirt in some of those ChiDope pictures; maybe she’s been there?

[tiny_ham]

Wow! The new Rammstein album has its own MUSEUM? No, I haven’t been there…and yet, they do have jarbabies there? I feel I should go at some point, eh?

[gallows_fodder]

The jar-babies were the most disturbing thing there, I thought – little fetuses with horribly deformed skeletons and skulls.

[kaiju]

Gallows fodder, I wouldn’t describe the older one as sensitive. More like blood thirsty. The younger one has been known to watch the X-Files and mutter, “Hmmf. Stage Blood.” No nightmares for either, although gawking at Jarbabies may not be the most healthy outlet for them.

I checked that link. Thanks Eve. They’re actually more likely to have problems with the Legionaire’s disease exhibit, and anything that prtrays our cat’s as “disease vectors,” since they’ll rationalize the rest, but apply that stuff directly to their own experience.

But, Hot Damn, it looks like there is a gift shop.

[Gundhilde]

Yeah, I went there when I was 12 or 13. That was the best vacation I’ve ever been on. I think if the kids are morbidly curious, they will love it. It’s not really that disgusting, but it is extremely interesting – and you can play it up among friends as being more disgusting than it really was. I saw the Liberty Bell too, but it wasn’t nearly as memorable.

The Pennsylvania/New Jersey area is actually a wonderful place to go for a vacation; at least I thought so. I got to go back to my 7th grade class with Mutter calendars and stories of being kicked out of a New Jersey casino. And a Hershey’s Chocolate hangover.