CONCLUSION
"Thousands of ghastly mementos fill its cases, showing every conceivable variety of wounds."
The Daily Inter Ocean, Chicago, 1874
The peculiar function of medical museums also comes with unprecedented responsibility. A legacy of exploitation looms over the entire American medical field, orthodox and unorthodox, including the museums it created.
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Many medical museums in the United States are beginning to reckon with their history of exploitation by working with historians and disability activists to reexamine their exhibits. By removing marginalizing or outdated language or centering the life of the exhibited person rather than their condition, medical museums can work to create more humanizing institutions.
Beginning in 1996 until they were put in storage in the summer of 2020, Samuel George Morton's extensive skull collection had been housed in the Penn Museum's Physical Anthropology section. Students studied the skulls to glean information on disease, health, and injury in earlier human populations. There is no evidence that the collection was not accompanied by any context about Morton's racist ideas or unethical practices.
Samuel George Morton's collection of stolen human remains had been used for decades to teach anthropology students. Photo via The Penn Museum.
In April 2021, the Penn Museum at the University of Pennsylvania formally apologized for its "unethical possession" of Samuel George Morton's skull collection. A year later, it began the process of burying thirteen of the skulls in the collection that belonged to Black citizens of Philadelphia.
While it is impossible to verify specifically how and from where Morton acquired these thirteen skulls, they are believed to have died in a Philadelphia almshouse, penniless, with no relatives to claim their bodies. Some of them may have been formerly enslaved. Because Morton worked at that particular almshouse as a physician, anthropologist Michael Wolff Mitchell believes that Morton likely knew some of the people whose corpses he stole to further his racist studies. Speaking to The Guardian, Mitchell said
"These remains are among the most direct testaments to the violent history of medical and scientific racism in Philadelphia and the United States."
Repatriation or reburial of Morton's collection is no simple task. Morton stole remains from all over the world, and some of the skulls in the collection may date from as far back in history as ancient Egypt. Morton's cataloging is scant and unreliable.
The judiciary hearing regarding the skulls' reburial is scheduled for February 2023. The Penn Museum's actions could set a precedent for unethically-sourced human remain collections in institutions worldwide. Until then, museums and collections must continue to reform and reexamine their collections to better honor and respect its inhabitants.