Mutter Museum Documentary

After watching the documentary on the Mutter Museum, besides being a little queasy, I thought a lot about one of the questions that came up, whether the purpose of the museum in modern time is more so for education or entertainment.  I think that it is a little bit of both.  Obviously the artifacts or the models in the museum are used to display medical conditions before we knew anything about them and before medical advancements and discoveries were made.  Over time, relevant artifacts have been collected but I think that the reason the museum is still in business is because we need to take into consideration how much has changed since these discoveries were first made.  Part of this course is observing how different groups were once put in a different kind of light, and observing groups as "freaks", when today, that may not be the case at all. It teaches us how points of views have changed over time and how different the modern world is.  It teaches us how many advancements have been made and that things have changed for the better.  There are things we still may not understand, but we have certainly heard of many of the medical cases or simply individual characteristics and we don't take into account how it was viewed decades, even centuries ago.  I think the museum still stands because it does serve as a source of entertainment but it really opens up your eyes to the history of medicine, authority, and oppression.