Coma and collections.

Wednesday, I took a nap after tutorial around 2, and didn't wake up until 8.  This may seem like a long-ish but not abnormal nap, except that when I say 8, I mean 8 am.  The next day.  Because it was brought on by illness (still recovering from being sick) and it is uncertain whether or not I was capable of being awakened, the pre-meds claim it could technically have been a coma.  Despite the health hazards, I must say the 20ish hours of unbroken unconsciousness was quite rejuvenating, and I highly recommend it.

Tuesday, our architecture class went to the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons.  It is a fantastic anatomical collection with a focus on abnormalities.  The most fascinating piece to me was an adult skeleton of an individual who'd had fibrodysplasia ossificans progressiva - where muscle and connective tissue turn into bone.  You may be asking what our architecture class was doing in this macabre menagerie: we are studying the concept of collecting since it was a common hobby during the Enlightenment, and how collections were housed architecturally so that they didn't horrify the laypeople.  For example, the Hunterian household was divided into three parts, with the bodysnatching happening on one end, Mrs. Hunter holding posh book clubs on the other, and the anatomical collections displayed in the middle, a physical manifestation of its place somewhere between barbarous and polite society.

All this talk about collections got me to realizing that England really does seem to have quite an obsession with it.  Most museums here are the product of a single wealthy individual with an appetite for the curios.  This would be an appropriate time to mention the Wellcome Museum, which has become my second home.  The Wellcome Trust was the brainchild of Sir Henry Wellcome, whose dedication to health, research, and the public understanding of science makes him a man after my own heart.  It is only a block away from where I live -

- and has a beautiful library on the top floors open only to science/science history students.  It's the closest thing I've found to Honnold-Mudd back at Pomona, but what Honnold-Mudd doesn't have are things like Darwin's walking sticks or the medical case used in the 1933 Everest expedition -

- or Florence Nightengale's moccasins -

- or confocal microscope photography exhibits or the complete library of the human genome (a book for each chromosome!).  In short, it is nerd heaven.  If you've heard of the Science Museum, that's also a Wellcome Trust institution; many of the labs at UCL are Wellcome labs, too, and the list goes on.

I also recently ventured to the Charles Dickens museum, another prodigious collection.  On the way there, Alex and I we were amused to run into this elite establishment:

This college?  It's pretty okay.

- A great example of one of my favorite observations about the English and their fun signs.  "Humps for 300 yards" is another good example, albeit a bit racy - 

- But that's just the thing, they don't seem to realize the inappropriateness.  Which returns me to the Dickens Museum where, amongst some genuinely awesome artifacts from Dickens's life (like the table upon which he penned his last words), there were also some treasures like this:

They're referring to women in the family, but it sure doesn't sound like it.

Anyway, off to practical to play with rat babies! Er, I mean do super serious experiments with mammalian organisms.  Lots more soon!