During the summer I spent in Philadelphia interning in an epigenetics and neuroscience lab, the graduate student I was working under was quick to give me a list of Philadelphia activities that he felt were necessary experiences to complete my trip. At the top of that list was the Mütter Museum at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia. This museum, founded in 1787 houses an extensive collection of human body specimens from people with rare conditions along with medical tools and devices from throughout history. The one-of-a-kind display of real humans was founded with a “mandate to ‘lessen human misery,’” (Mütter Museum Visit) and raises the question of where the line is between using the human body as a means for scientific discovery and advancement, and exploitation of a person’s attributes.

The entrance to the museum is a bright white lobby similar to other history museums. They have posters of their popular exhibits hang on the walls to get their visitors interested and excited. However, one jarring detail sets the Mütter Museum apart—instead of advertising dinosaur bones and rare artifacts dug up from ancient graves, the posters boast graphic images of raw human body parts. The explicit images are just a taster of what’s to come as visitors venture through the museum. Once the $20 admission is paid, visitors are allowed through to the exhibits. The pristine environment of the lobby quickly shifts to a dimly lit, ominous room full of a plethora of human body parts. The large rectangular room which houses the majority of the exhibits has two floors—the balcony which is home to two of their most intriguing exhibits, The Soap Lady and the Hyrtl Skull Collection, and the bottom floor which is home to some of the more disgusting and lesser-known pieces.

The first thing that is stressed to visitors is the fact that no photos or videos should be taken, both because of the fragility of the specimens and rare artifacts, and out of respect for the people preserved in the museum. Through this guideline, the Mütter Museum hopes to protect the privacy of everyone in the museum, no matter how much they displayed themselves to the public in their past lives, and whether or not the people knew that their bodies or body parts would be displayed in the museum after their death.

For two people on display, Harry Eastlack and Carol Orzel, this acknowledgment seems to serve as an extra layer of respect for their lives. Harry Eastlack was born in 1933 and diagnosed with Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva (FOP) in 1937. This extremely rare and deadly disease “is caused by a genetic mutation” and “results in progressive fusion of all the joints in the skeletal system” (Mütter Museum Harry and Carol). Essentially, the muscles and tendons in the body slowly turn to bone in an emotionally and physically agonizing process. During Eastlack’s life, very little was known about the disease for which there is still no cure, and he was never able to meet another person with his disease. Before his death in 1973, Eastlack “requested that his body be used to help understand more about his disease” both from a medical professional and public perspective. In 1959, Carol Orzel was born and diagnosed with FOP. Throughout her lifetime, she was a major advocate for “more research, established networks of communication with others with FOP, and educated both the public and medical professionals about the disease.” In 1995 Orzel saw Eastlack’s skeleton and was inspired to donate her body specifically to the Mütter Museum in an effort to continue educating others about FOP.

Both Eastlack and Orzel wanted their bodies to be put on display after their deaths to leave a lasting impact on the world, and hopefully better the lives of those also suffering from FOP. Their lifetimes were devoted to further educating medical professionals and the general public about this extremely rare disease. The Mütter Museum serves as a perfect place for them to be able to do that. Its affiliation with The College of Physicians of Philadelphia ties the bodies and stories of Eastlack and Orzel closely to top medical professionals in a city known for its top-of-the-line healthcare. Additionally, the Mütter Museum’s service as a top attraction for the major metropolitan area of Philadelphia means that many people from varying backgrounds have the opportunity to learn about FOP through the exhibition featuring the skeletons of two people who lived with FOP. Both Eastlack and Orzel expressed a clear interest in being displayed in a place like the Mütter Museum, meaning that they are displayed in the museum with consent and respect for their wishes.

However, the same cannot be said for many of the specimens displayed in the museum. For instance, of the 139 human skulls displayed as part of the Hyrtl Skull Collection, none of these people expressed any desire to be a part of such an exhibit. This collection of skulls was carefully curated by Josef Hyrtl, an Austrian anatomist. The skulls were primarily taken illegally from graves of Caucasian people who took their own lives and executed criminals. In paying people to rob graves, Hyrtl challenged the racist belief by many phrenologists that differences in cranial anatomy across racial lines led to personality and intellectual differences between Caucasians and other races. Although Hyrtl broke the law, his collection played an important role in quashing a harmful belief about racial differences and showing that intelligence and personality are unrelated to skull shape. His collection displays the skulls of 139 people each labeled with basic information about their background including things like “name, age, cause of death, occupation, where they were from, and any other relevant information” (The College of Physicians of Philadelphia). Under fluorescent display lights, museum visitors can learn the brief life story behind each of the skulls contained within the glass case, many of whom led difficult lives resulting in tragic ends. By displaying such an important body part of 139 individuals all together, the part of the body that houses the brain, essentially the organ responsible for their entire being, the collection diminishes the value of each person and their experiences. Allowing each of the skulls to fade into a mass collection of specimens makes it easy for visitors to forget that every single skull displayed in the museum led a unique life. A wall full of skulls in various conditions looks like an abstract art piece, but it also erases the true entity of the person who unknowingly and unwillingly donated their body first to Hyrtl’s collection and then to a public museum.

In addition to the Hyrtl Skull Collection, one of the main attractions of the medical museum is the Soap Lady, an exhibit showcasing a woman who was naturally embalmed in her own fat via a process called saponification. This process involves the hydrolysis of body fat, meaning that water molecules react with human body fat and a rare type of bacteria, transforming the feature into adipocere, an “organic material, with the consistency of semi-hard cheese and a soapy, waxy texture” (Penn Museum). The young lady was initially buried in the late eighteenth century. When the body was later exhumed in 1875, nearly a century later, physicians discovered a decaying life-size model of a wax figure coated in a thick layer of air pollution. Since her addition to the museum, she has been the star attraction.

Throughout time, the Soap Lady has been blatantly insulted for her appearance since her death, and the curator of the museum from 1937 to 1945 called her “’one of the most revolting objects that can be imagined’” (Penn Museum). Along with her decayed appearance, especially seen through her uneven skin surface, missing teeth, and the few remaining wispy hair strands, her mouth has been fixed in a screaming position. The combination of these features has given many people cause to pick apart her appearance. Throughout this lady’s lifetime, she led the life of an ordinary woman before likely succumbing to yellow fever. Suddenly, she was dug up from her grave and used by a museum centuries later to make a profit by showing her body off. Taking advantage of the Soap Lady’s vulnerable state (a deceased body without the capability to object to her own self on public display), her glass-enclosed grave becomes a form of profit and a major draw for visitors to entice them to see the rest of the museum. The deceased woman had no knowledge that her after-death state would become a permanent fixture in a museum; therefore, this interment is against the woman’s will. She had no idea what future her body would hold after her death. Countless people have journeyed to the Mütter Museum, paid the admission fee, and gawked at this woman displayed alone in an old glass case, under bright white lights for a few minutes before moving on. However, this woman’s body has been frozen in place forever, and no matter what people decide to say about her remains, her body cannot escape it. Even though she did not choose this life for herself, other people have decided her fate and thrust her body into a public tomb potentially forever.

The Mütter Museum essentially profits from her flesh. Unlike an art museum where the art piece is the subject of criticism by the masses, this woman herself is vulnerable and subject to public scrutiny. During her lifetime, this woman had no idea what would be in store for her body, and she had no say about whether she wanted to be exposed the way that she is today. Even major museums like the British Museum, which faces immense criticism for their looted artifacts, naked corpses of bodies found in graves and tombs are not displayed in the same manner. The Soap Lady exhibit in the Mütter Museum dehumanizes the woman, failing to recognize the life she led and her entity as a human being. Unlike the Hyrtl Skull Collection, Soap Lady cannot fade into the background; she cannot obscure herself with the many other specimens displayed alongside her exhibit. She is alone.

Wandering into the room where all of these human bodies are housed, it is hard not to feel uneasy about the countless people whose bodies were collected in this museum. Beyond the visitors who paid the admission fee to enter the museum, there are hundreds more people within the four walls of the exhibit room. Unlike the visitors however, these people will never leave. It is eerie to know that the museum has a part of as many people as a small apartment complex all in one room at any given moment. These people did not choose to live together but were forced into it because of their uncontrollable oddities.

While exploring various rare human body conditions, the Mütter Museum welcomes visitors for an experience unlike any other. The museum brings to life the endless possibilities for unique experiences in medicine. This comes at the cost of the subjects in the museum, however. In their attempt to show visitors specimens unlike any other, the museum crosses the line between displaying the wonders of medicine and the violation of privacy of those who suffered in order to give the museum their content. At first, going to the museum seemed like an inspiring experience to my high-school premed self, but wandering through the museum and seeing the displays of vulnerable people left me feeling unsettled, as though I intruded on something private and intimate by staring at the bodies of all of these people who greatly suffered throughout their lives. Although some of the exhibits such as the one featuring Harry Eastlack and Carol Orzel are a continuation of their life’s work, other exhibits display the deceased, taking their life’s story and secrets to the grave, quite literally. Such is the case for one of the star attractions, the Soap Lady. The legacy that her body holds is completely unknown to her, and yet the Mütter Museum will continue to profit from her and her embalmed flesh.