Hello Mütter!

Yesterday I went with Peanut and Bad Mama to Philadelphia's Mütter Museum. It's a respectful museum devoted to medical anomalies, utterly fascinating if you like that sort of thing, which all three of us do. I was deeply struck by a unique method of tissue preparation devised by Werner Spalteholz, not a name I was previously familiar with. One of the great German anatomists -- his Hand Atlas is still regarded as a classic -- he devised a method to render tissue transparent, which is still used to this day. The trick is to permeate the tissue with chemicals of the right index of refraction, such as oil of wintergreen, which 'clears' the tissue, like a grease spot on a paper placemat. You stain or dye the things you want to highlight, and they appear like a floating three-dimensional hologram in the preparation. Spalteholz's method was used extensively in Dresden's German Hygiene Museum, the original home of the Transparent Man which freaked so many members of my generation out as children. Between Hitler trashing the Otto Dix murals, the Billy Pilgrim incident, and the Soviet aftermath, eighty percent of the museum was destroyed. Interestingly, the Soviets thought highly enough of the museum to rebuild it. Spalteholz patented his method in the U.S. (#1021952), after being given an honorary doctorate at the University of Wisconsin a few years before. Not a whole lot of information on the history of this sort of innovation out there.

Comments

[Bernard Guerrero]

Hey, my Mom's old line of work! Cryosections, staining, slides. I was the first kid on my block with a microscope and a tumor biopsy.

[Dennis Brennan]

Enjoy your visit here. The Mutter is always a great place to bring a first date...

You guys must have brought the Wisconsin cold here with you, damn you.

As long as you're here, just don't try to discuss the 1:56 punt with anyone: you'll make those around you even more sullen and combative.

[Carlos]

As long as y'all never bring up 4th-and-26, I think we can reach a modus vivendi.

[Dennis Brennan]

Deal. I can guarantee that it will not come up, for two reasons:

1) McNabb isn't the golden boy in local popular opinion anymore; Garcia is.

2) We'd really rather have something to complain about. While you're here, listen to 610 AM in the morning if you want to confirm this. (It's also a great way for yiz to brush up on your Philly accent.) They also talk about Wing Bowl a lot, which seems likely to be the sort of spectacle that you might find of interest.

[Carlos]

Well, I'm back in Brooklyn, and won't be back in Philly until St. Patrick's Day, so my football talk will probably have moved on to F/a/v/r/e/'/s/ r/e/t/i/r/e/m/e/n/t/ obsessing about draft picks by then.

(reminds me, I have to get a copy of the Boise State game. none of my friends TiVoed it, the bastards. what is best in life? to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear their lamentations after winning the game on a Statue of Liberty play. or watch it with a beer, either.)