American Horror Story’s Morbidity Museum Based on True Story
The Morbidity Museum in “American Horror Story: Freak Show” was unspeakably horrific, and it turns out it was based on real-life institutions displaying specimens with genetic abnormalities.
The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, perhaps not coincidentally the same city in which the fictional Morbidity Museum is situated, is an American institution displaying macabre reminders of human fragility, and it is thought to be the inspiration for the fiendish “American Horror Story” curiosity cabinet.
The history of the Mütter is not riddled with murder and exploitation, however; it was instead created as a place where medical students could learn to empathize with the human stories behind the specimens.
J. Natan Bazzel, Director of Communications for the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, explained: “All of the specimens from the collection have a very human story to them,” Bazzel says. “That was really one of Dr. Mütter‘s primary goals [when he gifted his collection to the college]: It was to better enable medical students to develop in the realm of compassion.”
Buying and selling human remains is obviously unethical in this day and age. All of the specimens in The Mütter have been donated from various sources. Bazzel told interviewers from Philly Now: “One thing we do not — we do not — do is purchase specimens. We receive specimens from other institutions if they’re getting rid of them. For instance, we received approximately 670 brain slices and segments embedded in acrylic from St. Vincent’s Hospital in New York when they were shutting down. Other specimens we receive from private donations, such as doctors who may have various specimens from their teaching collections, and they’re retiring and decide to donate them to us. It’s very diverse.”
Although the collection at The Mütter is undeniably morbid in content, the university behind the museum hopes people understand that it is a place of education that strives to celebrate the diversity of human existence. In the words of Bazzel: “The human form is not one specific form, and that’s one of the things we hope that people understand when they come to The Mütter. It attracts people for many different reasons, but it doesn’t matter why they come. What does matter is that they walk away with an understanding of compassion, and we hope that visitors walk away with a better understanding of what it means to be human.”
Categorized:News Retrospectives
