Toten Tanz
Anyone who believes beauty is skin deep hasn’t visited the Anatomicsches Museum in Basel.
I visited it twice, not that once would not have sufficed but the first time my camera was on the blink. My eldest daughter, who starts medical school this month, thought the museum was ‘really cool’. Long finished his medical studies, my husband accompanied me for a second round. In general, he was impressed with the displays and in particular, the amazing amount of patience required for the preparation of each specimen.
No longer a practising nurse, I lean more toward the metaphysical these days and can’t help wondering if the two-legged, two-headed skeleton counts as one person with one soul or two persons with a soul each?
Naturally, to visit the museum, one needn’t be accompanied by anyone with the slightest medical interest—a couple of ghoulish teens would do. Years ago, when all the specimens were housed in heavy wood-framed, glass cases and the museum was open only on Sundays, a friend of mine visited it after church with her two children. When I asked if they went once or many times, she said, “I don’t recall. It may have been only once but it seemed like more. I know we came away feeling faintly sick and green at the gills but fascinated never-the-less.”
Now housed in modern glass casings, there’s no need to wait for a Sunday to view the recently repickled, century-old specimens. Opening hours are Monday through Friday from 1400 to 1700 hours. Until May of this year, the spine is featured. Worth playing with is a neat, hands-on model that illustrates better than any explanation, how improper lifting strains the spine. Furthermore, you can compare the fist-sized human heart to that of an elephant or a mouse and marvel that such a small muscle pumps 24/7 for seven plus decades (if you’re lucky and look after it). You can also examine a hip implant, a fracture repair and a knee replacement, and consider how many people are not in wheelchairs but still mobile owing to advances in medical science.
If you can shake off the feeling that you are walking among the dead, a visit to the Anatomisches Museum may prove more interesting than you first thought.
ANATOMISCHES MUSEUM der Universität Basel
Pestalozzistrasse 20
CH - 4056 Basel
Museum-Anatomie@unibas.ch
1 comment:
We took our grandchildren to see Bodyworks, the exhibition of plasticized bodies and parts. We were all fascinated and I was surprised to get criticism for taking children to see such stuff! How could seeing the destruction in a smoker's lungs hurt them? Why wouldn't they benefit by seeing the beautiful order of our insides? I enjoyed this piece and could I suggest that you translate the title at the beginning of the piece?
Post a Comment