At The Medical Museum

Here we were, circling the same two block radius three days after Christmas, Philadelphia. Anna's cousin, Marie, and her husband had squeezed in a last-minute appointment at the hospital for what they thought would be hours--their first sonogram--and since we had driven up to the city early, decided to visit the medical museum. A foot of snow had fallen on Christmas Day. Mounds of it frozen solid along the sidewalks. There were no spaces free on South Street, but after rounding the block once more we caught an SUV pulling away from a metered spot on 22nd. The lady at the front desk let us in at a student rate--ten bucks less than full price--and after hanging our coats in the coat room off the foyer, we muted our cell phones and passed under the center staircase into the main hall.

It had the air of a 19th century study. In fact, the main room, two stories of oddities shelved and displayed behind glass, had all the musky, varnished orderliness of a mansion library. The upper level overlooked a lower, larger room; along the iron railing there were display cases of bone fragments, animal skulls, and, in one case, a two-foot length of leatherized human skin. We began at a display of forensic evidence and moved counterclockwise along the wall, which featured, in order: an otologists' collection of ear bones (fifty pieces, labeled); surgical instruments of Civil War field doctors; daguerrotype reproductions of amputees (shiny, blank eyes); six human skeletons accompanied by instructions on how to identify sex, race, occupation and manner of death; an adipocere mummy, "The Soap Lady", whose flesh had been preserved as a waxy putty of fat. After plaster models of various syphilitic ailments and tumorous growths, we reached the wall-length cabinet furthest from the entrance, and began reading the names, ages, and places of origin of forty-eight skulls set a hand's length apart and staring out at the faces on the other side of the glass.

On each the identifying details and manner of death were written in calligraphic ink on the cranial dome. And these, Anna pointed out, were enigmatic threads as well, extending from the mortician or collector's hand to our own. Weren't we also writing these names down, in our pocket notebooks? And was this a proper, respectful way of presenting oneself to the scavenged and the beheaded, glibly jumbled together and numbered? Their stories were minimal and far-flung enough; the hand felt enough emotion to write them down. From skull to hand, to pulped paper: skull of Adalbert Czaptieonesz -- age 51 -- Poland, Catholic, suicide -- cut his throat because of extreme poverty.

Whole lives were set down in fifteen words or less. Some were suggestive enough to mold features onto the naked slates of their faces.

An infamous Thai pirate, a Serbian assassin, a maid-servant who killed herself after being accused of stealing. On the shelf above was a mother who had been executed for killing her two children, alongside a young suicide who killed for love. Hangings, drownings, gunshot wounds, an old, hard-worn Russian who cut his throat at seventy and, due to a calcified larynx, lived for ten more years to "die in good spirits". Four rows of twelve each, the minimal remains of a single body flayed to pieces and leaping back to an original, undamaged oneness.

The afternoon crowd was busy, we kept moving, right to left. Before pushing on Anna pointed to one last, smaller skull at our knees. Gazing out of two eye-holes and a gaping nasal pyramid, rushing into brain matter mercurial, mood darkened and blinking: Andjrejew Sokoloff -- Scopzi (Russian sect that believes in castration), dead of self-inflicted removal of testicles.

The forehead was prominent, the teeth jagged and cadmium blue. The mortician's handwriting covered the left side of the skull. But the lower jawbone was missing, as with all of them. One would have to hold a skull like that to gauge how much it weighed. And have one just like it, to imagine how heavy.