Skeletons of conjoined twins with two heads and one body, the cancerous growth removed from President Grover Cleveland and 2,000 items retrieved from patients' throats: These are just some of the more than 20,000 unusual objects that make up the collection at Philadelphia's Mutter Museum. The medical museum started in 1858, when Thomas Dent Mutter, a retired professor of surgery at Jefferson Medical College, presented his personal collection of models and specimens to The College of Physicians of Philadelphia, which houses the Mutter collection. The museum now attracts nearly 80,000 visitors a year. But most aren't aware that the museum also houses an extensive archive of historic medical photography. Blast Books has just published nearly 200 of the archival images in a volume edited by Laura Lindgren: "Mutter Museum Historic Medical Photographs." Here, a sampling of photographs taken between the mid-19th and mid-20th centuries.
All images (c) College of Physicians of Philadelphia and courtesy Mutter Museum and Blast Books
Buy the book, 'Mutter Museum Historic Medical Photographs'
