Collections Not Suitable for the Faint of Heart

We are macabre. And the evidence is clear. One of the most successful exhibitions in recent years is called Bodies, The Exhibition (www.bodiestheexhibition.com $24.50), which can be seen in cities like New York, Miami, Las Vegas, and London. Visited by school groups and adults alike, it offers a genuine anatomy lesson as it allows a deep understanding of the human muscular, skeletal, circulatory, reproductive, and respiratory systems. The novelty is that the exhibit showcases 22 complete bodies and 260 organs from cadavers that have undergone a preservation process with silicone. You can see a smoker's lung next to a healthy one, the effects of obesity or the tension of muscles at work, for instance, when kicking a ball or swinging a racket, as the displayed whole bodies have their tissues and bones visible. Also crowded and not very pleasant is the Forensic Medicine Museum (www.si.mahidol.ac.th/eng/ Museums.htm). Located in Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand, the museum exhibits embalmed bodies of criminals, such as the cannibal Si Quey, the country's most infamous mass murderer; photos of autopsies and fatal accidents that are not suitable for sensitive viewers, or fetuses preserved in formaldehyde, among other charming exhibits. Without going so far, at the Reverte Coma Museum (www.ucm.es/info/museoafc) in Madrid, you can also see trepanned medieval skulls, those of murderers or deformities; deadly and prison weapons, embalmed mummies, and a collection of photographs of cyclopes, conjoined twins, and other malformations.

And if someone is feeling queasy, it's best not to visit the Meguro Parasitological Museum in Tokyo (Japan), the only museum in the world where you can see 300 varieties of parasites. Among the mosquitoes, lice, mites, worms, pubic lice, and other creepy-crawlies that make you itch just thinking about them, the star of the collection is a tapeworm over eight meters long.