I remember it like it was yesterday. A young boy only in second grade. We were on an innocent field trip to Museum of Science and Industry. We were set to learn about exciting things like coal mining and baby chickens. Me and several other students walked up a dark stair case and I saw it. Two horrific slices of human bodies sat encased in plexiglass. "They are real!" another little boy declared. "No way", I said. I knew that a museum would never display something so gruesome and just stick it in a random dark stair case. I edged closer. The detail was undeniable. Tiny hairs protruded from the thin strips of flesh. These were not created by the hand of man. They were created by the hand of God....and then mutilated by the hand of man. Sickness filled my body and my stomach. I wanted to run out of the museum. I would have been no less horrified to find a murdered body in that hallway.
My whole life the images sat in my brain. I never forgot my encounter with The Museum of Science and Industry's notorious "Body Slices" exhibit.
I returned to the museum several times. Where I lived in Indiana a trip to the Museum was an almost annual occurrence. I never saw the body slices again. Maybe they had placed them in storage. Maybe I just somehow avoided that horrifying dark stair case.
Fast forward to modern day. My family took a trip to Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago while visiting family this Christmas season. Its a good museum. There is no denying that. Some good hands-on education for the kids.
They had some cloned mice......
They had a really cool Circus exhibit.....
The exhibit also included some great Circus miniatures.....
Including a menagerie....
And a little freak show!
Other exhibits in the museum are downright whimsical....
They even had a set of my beloved Mold-A-Rama machines.....
As we reached the end of our tour, we stepped into the exhibit innocently referred to as "You! The Experience". And then I saw them......
The Body Slices. In all their disgusting glory.
They were every bit of revolting and traumatizing as I remember. "Those are awesome!" My 10 year old daughter declared.
Okay, maybe they were a little less creepy in a well lit exhibit hall instead of a dark staircase.
The two original body slices were now accompanied by a whole room full of respectfully preserved human remains, like this sliced foot.
And this human thigh cut like a slice of country ham.
Oh, but it doesn't there. I had a chance to see something I had never seen before: Plastinated human bodies.
For those who are unfamiliar, plastination is where human tissue is altered through chemicals that transform flesh into plastic to create cadavers that do not rot or stink......
They are really gross.
Check out this freaky exploding corpse monster.......
The Museum of Science and Industry....Where your nightmares are made flesh......
Later I asked my daughter what her favorite part of the museum was, she said it was the bodies.......
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