Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads: The culture of natural history museums by
Stephen Asma, Oxford University Press, $30/拢22.99, ISBN 0195130502
AT 8 foot and 4 inches tall, Charles O鈥橞rien was reckoned the tallest man
alive. In 18th-century London, he was billed as the 鈥淚rish Giant鈥�, and people
queued to see him. But O鈥橞rien was a terrified man. He feared that when he died
his body would be boiled for its highly exhibitable skeleton. He made a deathbed
arrangement to be weighted with lead and buried at sea. But John Hunter, the
(in)famous British anatomist, bribed O鈥橞rien鈥檚 fishermen and boiled the corpse
in his Earls Court home. The skeleton stands in the Hunterian Museum to this
day.
Hunter may have been extreme in his devotion to obtaining specimens, but he
was far from alone in his belief that public exposure to the diversity of the
natural word was a good and noble thing. In Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads,
Stephen Asma tracks the story of natural history museums from their earliest
curiosity-cabinet beginnings to the magnificence of today鈥檚 interactive computer
displays. He shows how such institutions have always been the outward
manifestations of whatever happened to be the current philosophy of science and
the sociology of its handmaiden, education.
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As full of curious facts and mental treats as any museum display, this
fascinating book shows there is more behind the museum facade than a few busy
biologists. Asma gives a history academics鈥� perception of how their work and
discoveries should be presented to the public at large. 鈥淎fter reading this book
museum-goers will not be able to look at exhibits in the same way again,鈥� avows
the author. He could be right.