Not for the faint of heart

Yesterday we left work early to spend the afternoon at the Sirirat Forensic Museum where we’d heard you could see the preserved body of Thailand’s first serial killer. Who wouldn’t want to go?

We got a tuk tuk from the house to Sirirat Hospital and followed the signs to the museum. After numerous twists and turns (and helpful Thai’s pointing the way) we made it to the museum and paid our 40 bhat entrance fee.

The first room was filled with ancient medical equipment and pictures of Thai men, none of which we could learn anything about because all of the descriptions were in Thai. I was beginning to think we wasted an afternoon, when we turned into the second room and were faced with a sight I hope never to see again. The room was large and open with observation cases along the bottom of the walls with explanations in Thai (I presume) above each case. Other free standing cases filled the room making short rows in the middle so that you could walk up one and down the next for the length of the room. Sitting atop each end of the freestanding cases were what looked like Thai dolls in fluid filled jars. Upon closer examination, we found that these were not dolls at all, but unborn Thai babies and stillbirths with various deformities and physical complications. I thought I was going to be sick. All along the first wall, these babies were displayed, some with descriptions in English as to their condition. Of those without English descriptions, some had obvious conditions such as one who had been born without the top of her skull and others who either had conditions we could not identify or who looked completely normal. We walked around from baby to baby not knowing whether to stay and look or to run screaming. Unfortunately the worst was yet to come.

On the next wall from the babies, there were human hands and feet and legs, in similar states of preservation, with various ailments. It was horrific. You could still see the hair on the legs and the bones protruding from the skin where they were broken from the rest of the body. In one jar, there was a human head, or at least half of one, with the cross section cut facing the glass so you could see the entire brain. I would have found it interesting if it weren’t for the other side, a real human face, staring out at nothing. The cases in the center and along the back wall contained more babies, some still in a detached womb, as well as assorted human organs showing signs of numerous cancers and other diseases. The organs were easier on my stomach.

On the back wall, there were displays of ectopic pregnancies, little tiny human beings stuck inside fallopian tubes. I had to keep repeating to myself that these things I was seeing were real.

Not being able to take much more, we headed to the next room for what we hoped would be reprieve only to be greeted with rows and rows of bones and skulls and pictures of people who had died in a myriad of ways: a man who had a gun shot wound to the head, a gun shot wound to the chest, multiple stab wounds, a man with tire tracks over his body, a man decapitated in a car accident, a child with a scar from a mazel tov cocktail, another child, rendered unidentifiable, from a bomb blast. Hurrying quickly past, we came upon the body of Thailand’s first serial killer, who had killed children because “he liked eating their organs.” He looked evil.

The rest of this room consisted of human body parts with wounds from murders, suicides or accidents. Another human head, cut in two down the middle and turned around so the insides were facing out, had a bullet wound to the brain and you could see the hole in the face and the bath of the bullet through the brain. There were crushed hands, crushed feet, some unidentifiable pieces and more human organs. Feeling really sick, we all headed towards the exit, only to find ourselves in yet another part of the museum.

The fourth section was dedicated to parasites and other nasty things that you could get from food, water or insects. The displays were in Thai and English, so you could read all about the horrible things that could happen to you right outside your door. Afterward, I wanted to hole up in my room and never leave. The one that sticks out in my mind the most is Elephantitus, where through some mode of transmission – oh, shoot – I’ve forgotten! – parts of your body, usually the legs or the scrotum in men, become enormous. There was a picture of a man with one normal leg one leg that was like the leg of a 500 pound person. Then there was a man, who appeared to be sitting on a boulder about the size of your average microwave oven (but round). Unfortunately, the ‘boulder’ were his testicles and the actual testicles were in a display case behind the picture. It made me thankful that I live in the time of modern medicine and in a country and socio-economic situation where advanced healthcare is available; and sad, thinking that the ailments that we saw were probably only as bad as they were because they affected someone in a poor rural village somewhere, and some that are most likely still affecting people today.

We left the museum not quite sure if we were glad that we came.