Museum of Human Body

Okay, everyone knows I like weird things, so it shouldn't be a surprise that the woman who lists The Monsters Inside Me as one of her favourite television programmes, should go to this museum.  Oh in case you are wondering, yes this is a real human head!

The Human Body Museum has 130 body parts, organs and full bodies on display at the museum, which is part of Chulalongkorn University and in their faculty of dentistry.  

The exhibits have been treated with a technique called Plastination.  This allows the bodies to remain preserved without decaying or smelling.  Really, you would think there would be some odour, but we couldn't smell anything.  

There is hardly any information in English so I have no idea where the bodies come from.  I think in the original international show, the German doctor who pioneered this technique had people donating their corpses to him for a chance to have a bit of immortality.  Baz, ever more prosaic, speculated that they could be prisoners.

I was fascinated by the different exhibits, all of which were displayed and dissected differently, to help you see the muscles, nerves, organs etc.  Yes some made you shudder (the man sliced down the middle as though a butcher had had him on the meat saw for example), but on the whole I couldn't help but marvel.   The one thing that horrified both of us, were the smokers lungs which were on display next to healthy ones.  If that black mass didn't turn you off smoking, nothing was going to!

It probably wont surprise you, but we were the only visitors except for a couple of students who came and went very quickly.  When we left, the staff wanted to know if we had been frightened.  Given that the international show of body plastination that passed through Bangkok had to be closed early due apparently, to lack of visitors (they were frightened of ghosts), I suppose it wasn't surprising that we had been questioned.  No I didn't find it frightening, but then I was able to disconnect from them being people and view them as anatomical specimens and just found myself amazed at what is under our skin.

Both Baz and I were interested to see how much like dried beef some of the exhibits looked.  I tell you, both of us headed home for vegetarian meals last night!