Siriraj Medical Museum

03 Oct 11:  Today we had class only half a day.  We finished the A&P, which I found to be a relief.  After lunch we went to the Congdon Anatomical Museum at the Siriraj Medical Museum in Bangkok.  Omygod.  This museum is full of human parts, skeletons, cadavers, jars of foetuses, Siamese twins, and other really horrific birth defects.  

We weren’t allowed to take any photographs inside the museums as the flashes will destroy the body tissues.  Some of them are over 250 years old.

The tourist brochure has this to say about Congdon Anatomical Museum (don’t sue me for plagiarizing.  I freely admit I copied this word for word, including punctuation):  “The Museum was established in 1927 by Prof. Dr. Edgar Davidson Congdon, the Rockefeller Foundation visiting professor of Anatomy at Siriraj.  It started with the collection of specimens dissected by Prof. Congdon and his students and later developed into a standard anatomical museum.  When Prof. Dr. Sood Sangvichien was the chairman of the department.  The museum was named Congdon  Anatomical Museum.  A variety of exhibits are displayed, such as human development from zygote through embryo and fetus, various types of congenital anomaly, conjoined twins, anatomy of every organ system of human, normal and abnormal.  The most fantastic specimen is whole body dissection of the nervous and arterial system.”

The other museum we had a look at was the Songkran Niyomsane Forensic Medicine Museum.  Happily, the brochure tells us this:  "While being chairman of Forensic Medicine, Prof. Dr. Songkran Niyomsane, a pioneer of this field at Siriraj, established this museum.  The museum exhibits many objects from homicide, suicide and accident cases, such as skulls, bones, preserved organs, preserved bodies of the notorious murder:  Si-Ouey as well as some blood stained clothes from Nualchawee’s case.  The most importance exhibited are skulls from experimental investigation and autopsy instruments which were used in the case of King Rama the VIII’s assassination.  The skeleton of Prof. Dr. Songkran is also mounted in the museum."

I spent the drive back to the campus staring out the window, this being my first chance to have a look around in the daylight.  Scooters and cars fill the roads, and everyone just kind of drives through it all.  Surprisingly, I haven’t seen an accident yet.  On the larger roads undertaking is the norm, and if you want a lane that someone else is in you just honk your horn until you cut them up.  Our driver, Po, is a cool customer and gets the job done. 

One thing I can say about the microscopic spec of Thailand I've seen so far is that where ever people go, they fill up the space completely.  In between pockets of people, piles of garbage, buildings in various states of disrepair, cars and motorcycles, are rice fields with white cranes stepping through the mud, eating.  This place is green, and the jungle is an ever present reminder that people are only a temporary fixture...

We got there and back safely, and now I’m going swimming.