By juxtaposing the possibilities of future scientific value with the value that these objects (primarily bodies) have held and still hold to their respective communities, I ask whose perception of value matters when it comes to deciding on what (or whom) stays in these collections.
Trevor Engel uses examples from amongst others:
- The Mütter Museum in Philadelphia (over 35,000 specimens, ranging from slides with microscopical diseases to historical medical tools, human fetuses, and entire skeletons)
- The Warren Anatomical Museum at Harvard University (15,000 specimens today, where the 954 specimens listed in the 1848 catalog from the Boston Society for Medical Improvement now reside.)
- The Berlin Museum of Medical History at the Charité in Berlin, (over 23,000 specimens in 1901).
