We visit the UNSW Museum of Human Disease which has hundreds of diseased specimens on display.
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We visit the UNSW Museum of Human Disease which has hundreds of diseased specimens on display.
Subscribe to the podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/roadshow-and-tell/id1666756225
Follow us on Instagram to see photos of stuff mentioned in this episode: @roadshowandtellpodcast
We have a lot of kidneys
Kate:lots of nail gun accidents
Ellen:that's coal dust that he's breathes in for his whole life it's this ball of hair, which is the exact shape of her stomach
Kate:Welcome to Roadshow and Tell, a podcast for people hoping to improve their pub trivia team score. I'm your host, Kate, and I'll visit museums so you can learn things you never knew you wanted to. Today we are visiting the Museum of Human disease at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. It's at the Kensington campus, a short 15 minute drive from the Sydney CBD. And how can you have a museum of human disease? With hundreds and hundreds of disease specimens. That's right, biological samples of organs and tissues that show a particular disease preserved in a solution and displayed in sealed containers. From malaria to measles. Tuberculosis to tetanus, this museum has an amazing collection. There are stories that accompany many specimens and they provide insights into the nature of the disease specimen and allow us to see the effects on the human body and the progression of specific conditions. I chat with the museum curator, Ellen Worgan, who is contagious in her enthusiasm for science education. We talk about the collection process, eradication of diseases and the crucial role disease specimens play in education. We also take a tour and delve into particularly interesting specimens, such as an ovary that started growing teeth. That's just one example of the many quirky and curious exhibits in this museum. So, get ready for an infectiously good time. So today I'm at the Museum of Human Disease with Ellen Worgan at U N S W. Hello, Ellen. Hi. And Ellen. Whose land are we on today?
Ellen:We're on the land of the Cadigal people. Lovely,
Kate:what is the Museum of Human Disease?
Ellen:So here we have a collection of a couple of thousand specimens of human tissue and organs, which are all showing disease in some way. So we don't have any healthy ones. But about 1400 of them are on display. And then we've got some other locations or in storage and things as well.
Kate:And why would you wanna collect diseased specimens?
Ellen:It's a great question. It's definitely not something that you see every day, which I think makes it a special place to come and visit. The real value of it is educational. There are not a lot of ways that you can still be teaching people something after you die unless you have written a book or made a documentary or something like that. But all of the people uh, and families who have donated specimens to the museum have been able to do that. And so the specimens here are able to help people understand disease better, help people understand their own health and our sort of social and cultural understanding of health a little bit more. And also sort of see things in a way that you wouldn't normally see. We talk a lot about disease and everybody encounters disease in some ways, a lot in their life. But it's not very often that you get to see those signs of disease up close and personal, especially inside the body.
Kate:Definitely. So these specimens, how are they preserved?
Ellen:So they are preserved in a solution of mostly water and formaldehyde. So they used to use pure formaldehyde, but it is very carcinogenic. So they don't do that anymore. They use a very dilute solution of it now, which preserves it just the same, but is a lot less dangerous to work with. And is a lot less dangerous to be on display should something happen.
Kate:And who are the people that donate? Do they decide to donate when they're healthy or when they become sick?
Ellen:We don't really know for a lot of the specimens, a lot of them are quite old. The majority of the collection has been here for many decades and because the legislation around Transporting and using human remains has changed over time, it's very difficult to have things donated now. We did have a specimen donated in the second half of last year which is our first new one for a while, and it's what we call a gastric trick over which is essentially a ball of hair that has built up inside the stomach. So like actual hair. Actual hair. So it's from a 14 year old girl who had a condition called trichotillomania, which is sort of a a nxiety based, obsessive compulsive condition where she would pull out her hair and then she'd eat it. And so because that can't be digested really because the hair protein is so tough, it just builds up in the stomach more and more and more. And essentially it's this ball of hair, which is the exact shape of her stomach. And so it's on display now, and that was the most recent one. And the reason that that was sort of easier to get than other donations is cuz it's not actually human remains uhhuh, like it's a, it's a mass from the body, but it's not actually an organ or tissue. So the legislation is a little bit different around that. But it's a very rare occurrence to have one of that size which you'll get to see in a few minutes. But the majority of the specimens, like I said, were donated decades ago. We have histories and sort of providence information for some and not for others. We don't know exactly what the donation process was. In some cases it may have been patients who gave permission either before they died or while they were still alive. Not all of the specimens were from lethal cases or um, were taken from deceased people. A lot of them, we, we don't know whether it was the person or their family or at the doctor's requests. it's A part of the issue of having a more historical collection is we don't have all the information because the processes for collecting that were not as good in the past as they are now.
Kate:What's the history of this museum? When did it start and who started it?
Ellen:So the collection was established in the sixties or seventies by a professor called Donald Wilhelm. And we've got some of his equipment and artifacts out here. And he sort of established the collection in its current form. The museum has existed since around 2000 which is when it became open to the public and had a schools program and became more accessible for people beyond pathology and medicine staff and students at the university.
Kate:Ellen tells me that the specimens are often used for teaching at the university where the museum is housed.
Ellen:So the pathology courses that run every year at the uni, the lecturers we'll request them to use in their presentations, or they'll send students here for homework and they'll have to find specimens
Kate:right. So they might just nip in and borrow a, a heart or a lung. Yeah. Yeah. And
Ellen:return it in seven days. Yeah, we sort of act as a support option as well for the staff.
Kate:what's the most popular part of the museum?
Ellen:I don't know if there's a most popular part, but we definitely have some specimens that are favorites. I think one thing that students find really fascinating are the specimens that you can sort of tell are a body part. I think for a lot of things, looking at like a lung or a kidney, it's not something that you see every day and think of as like part of your body. even though it is. But we've got, for example, specimens of fingers or a leg or a hand. And those ones I think sort of stand out cuz you go, oh, okay. That's, that's definitely a body part. Like I see that every day. Yeah. And
Kate:how come there's no healthy specimens to compare the diseased ones to?
Ellen:Mainly because people don't get asked to donate healthy specimens. We do have an anatomy museum on campus as well, and they tend to have healthy and pathological specimens as well. But here, the collection tends to just be things that I think generally were noticed by doctors or pathologists as noteworthyor interesting for that particular field of study. But we are in the process of putting together a set of healthy, not specimens, but images to compare things to. Because you know, if you don't know what a lung looks like, which most people don't really in any kind of detail it's kind of hard sometimes to notice what are the signs that these ones are diseased. So it's nice to have a bit of a comparison.
Kate:So let's take a step back. What types of diseases are there?
Ellen:We've got a really big range, so, Probably the majority of specimens that we have here show non-infectious diseases. We have a very large number of cancer specimens because there is such a huge range of them. And because it's so common, you know, one in two people will get cancer at some point in their lifetime. So that's a very large proportion of our collection. But we do have a really big variety of other non-infectious and infectious diseases. We have quite a good range of things from most parts of the body. So we've got a, you know, sections for heart specimens and we've got sections for lung specimens, but then we also have sections for like inflammatory diseases. We've got some displays on autoimmune diseases, neurological conditions. So we've got a pretty representative collection.
Kate:While they're not hunting for any new specimens at the moment, the big question on everyone's lips is, do you have any COVID specimens?
Ellen:Um, Which we don't. We definitely have specimens of things relevant to Covid. So in our covid display we have, for example specimens of pneumonia and specimens of blood clots because those are complications that are very strongly associated with Covid. But because it's so recent, and again, because the legislation around it now is very strict and particularly during the height of the pandemic, no one was going to be passing around human tissue that was infected. I think we sort of are at capacity in terms of the number of specimens that we can have in this space. If we get offered interesting ones, which sometimes we do buy other museums or hospitals that have them in storage or in a collection somewhere, we definitely look through and if there's things that either are different to what we currently have or in much better condition or a better example of a certain disease or a certain condition. Then we do see if we can add them in because it is nice to have as much variety as possible.
Kate:Speaking of vaccines do you have a display on vaccines and information about that?
Ellen:Yeah, we definitely do. So we have some specifically in our covid display on the Covid vaccine. We've got a few samples of those vaccines, but we also have one on vaccination generally. So a bit about the history, a bit about some case studies of where vaccines have been really successful in eradicating or minimizing the effective diseases. And that's quite new, but it's been, quite popular so far. Just been nice.
Kate:What diseases should Australians be worried about?
Ellen:I think in Australia the biggest burden of disease comes from non-infectious diseases. There's a lot of different ways you can look at it. If you look at cause of death, for example, the leading cause of death in Australia is cardiovascular disease. So anything that affects the heart and the blood vessels. So heart attacks, strokes but also a lot of other conditions that relate to those parts of the body. I think that's a really high priority and there's been a lot of attention on that in the past decade or so which is actually starting to flatten out or lower the levels of cardiovascular disease, which is really good. Lots of education on, how a healthy diet and lifestyle helps contribute to cardiovascular health. I think one of the biggest health priorities in Australia now and in the coming years will definitely be Alzheimer's and dementia. So that's the second leading cause of death in Australia. The first for women and the numbers of Alzheimer's and dementia patients or diagnoses are increasing dramatically and are continuing to increase, and it's a disease that we don't understand that well yet. It's very hard to study and hard to get any kind of results around treatments and things. There's a lot of work being done in it, A lot of really great research, but it's slow going. And the rate of increase of dementia, not just in Australia, but across the world is definitely outstripping our capacity to care for patients and support patients and caregivers. So I think that's gonna be a real priority. And that will definitely be overtaking cardiovascular disease as the number one cause of death in absolutely the next five to 10 years.
Kate:Is there a priority one disease for the world to eradicate
Ellen:in terms of looking at eradication? I think there's some diseases that we're so close to eradicating, like polio. We are so, so close to eradicating it, so it would be amazing if we could, close that last bit of a gap there's definitely other diseases that we've made really good progress on in terms of vaccination efforts. When I think about eradicating disease, I think infectious diseases tend to come to mind because they're the ones that we have developed better strategies to be able to eradicate them. I think a lot of non-infectious diseases, the risk factors are things like genetics, which we are learning to tackle and treat, but it's a, a relatively new approach to medicine and a lot of environmental and lifestyle factors, which are just hard to change because you've gotta change people's behavior to do that. Whereas infectious diseases, we've got a lot of really well established strategies for tackling those. And so things like mass vaccination campaigns have been incredibly successful at eradicating or nearly eradicating a lot of diseases.
Kate:And do you know what the number one disease eradication success story is? It's smallpox!
Ellen:Yeah, so smallpox is just the, it's the number one vaccine success story. So smallpox was very, very common. The vaccine for that was the first vaccine ever developed by a guy called Edward Jenner. He was a a doctor who did some wildly unethical experiments, but ended up coming up with a vaccine for smallpox. So he was testing this popular theory at the time that if you got cowpox, which is kind of similar to chickenpox, like it's unpleasant, but you don't die from it. So he's, he decided to test that theory by infecting the son of his gardener, nine year old boy with cowpox deliberately, and then deliberately exposing him to smallpox which is quite deadly. I think it's about one in seven children with smallpox would die from it. And thank God it worked and the boy didn't die. And for a long time that was how they vaccinated against smallpox by infecting people with Cowpox. THat's actually where the name vaccination comes from Vacca is latin for Cow. And so vaccinating someone is exposing them to Cowpox. Luckily now we have much better methods of vaccination, so we do not need to infect people with other diseases. And that evolved into being able to isolate pathogens for disease and modify them or inactivate them so that vaccines are not now carrying any risk of infecting someone. Instead they're just training the immune system to do that. So smallpox was one of the first diseases to have a mass vaccination campaign. The World Health Organization delivered that through the sixties and seventies and has been successful in eradicating that.
Kate:There have been no natural cases of smallpox since the last patient in 1977. It remains the most notable and profound public health success in history.
Ellen:There are two, samples of the smallpox virus. One is in the US and one is in Russia. And that's held in case there is ever a resurgence of that. And they need to make a vaccine again or study it again to find ways to fight against it cuz it's a disease that no one wants to see come back.
Kate:An estimated 300 million people died from smallpox in the 20th century alone. Smallpox was officially declared eradicated in 1979 and remains the first and only infectious disease eradicated that infects humans.
Ellen:That's absolutely the biggest success. In Australia, we have had amazing success at very nearly eradicating things like diptheria and measles and mumps rubella things that a lot of people, especially children used to die from. And now those things are nearly nonexistent. Yeah, we're very lucky that we have access to to vaccines and to such good healthcare.
Kate:What's your favorite exhibit?
Ellen:So I don't have a favorite one, but I think for me, and for most people who come, the spec, the specimens that engage them the most are the ones that relate to an experience or a person that they. Have or that they know. So I think the specimens that stand out to me are ones that relate to conditions that my family members have or my friends have. So I don't know if they're, I would say they're my favorites, but they're definitely ones that I think you've got some sort of connection to and have that bit of extra meaning and really make you want to learn more so you can understand and support your family and friends with.
Kate:Ellen, why do you like working here?
Ellen:I partly like working here because it is a really unique place to work. And it's working with a collection of things that most people never or very rarely would get to see. I am very passionate about science, education, and communication. I was a science teacher prior to working here. So I really like being able to engage with school students, but also with the wider public. And see them become engaged and interested in medicine and in science in a new way. I think it also is a great opportunity to use the specimens here that people have donated and be able to honor that in a way and be able to make that a really useful, interesting fascinating experience for the people who come here. And yeah, be able to keep the, the legacy of all those donors alive.
Kate:Are you a registered organ donor?
Ellen:I am.
Kate:Should we all be?
Ellen:Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. The need for organ donations in Australia is enormous as in every country. And far outstrips the number of of donations available. So if you can be a donor, please register to be a donor and talk to your family about it, because ultimately, it doesn't matter if you're registered, if your family say no, then doctors are unable to use you as a donor. So make sure that whoever is making your decisions for you in the event of something terrible happening knows what you want.
Kate:And why should people come and visit the Museum of Human Disease?
Ellen:I'd say they should come here because disease is something that will affect everyone in their life, whether it's you directly, whether it's a friend or a family member, whether it's, you know, something really serious or something really mild. But I think being able to understand that better and what that means for you and being able to understand other people's experiences better is always really valuable. And I think coming here builds on your general understanding of health and scientific literacy, which I think is incredibly useful as we sort of navigate through day-to-day life and are making decisions about our lifestyles and our health. So any information we can have to help that is always valuable. And it's also just a chance to see something that you hardly ever get to see. You very rarely get to see the inside of someone's body unless you are a doctor. So this is a great chance to do it. Shall will go and have a look at some specimens. Sounds good. Let's go.
Kate:The museum is a few long rooms with shelves lined with specimens suspended in resin, forming bays with different medical focuses. The first side on the left is organised by body part, with bays showcasing specimens from the mouth, esophagus, stomach, liver and pancreas, and then through to the brain, spinal cord and heart. The opposite side showcases general, congenital and genetic diseases such as arthritis, arthritis, inflammation, gout and bones.
Ellen:We have a lot of kidneys because kidneys can be donated, like kidneys can just be taken out in the case of a transplant. Or you can even just survive with one kidney on its own. So kidneys are something that are easier to get donated. In here we also have diseases related to the blood. So some of these are cancers. So things like lymphoma. Also some things which are a little trickier to classify. So HIV, for example affects the immune system, which is primarily in our blood and our lymphatic system. So that's grouped here as well. Skin conditions as well. Quite a lot of skin cancers, which is particularly relevant in Australia for us We've got a section on diseases either specific to or with specimens from infancy and childhood. So some congenital conditions, things that people are born with or things that developed in younger children. The endocrine system or the system that creates our hormones. There are quite a lot of very interesting conditions to do with that because hormones are very active in the body. So anything that affects the function of those is gonna have quite major impacts on people.
Kate:At the back of the museum we enter a trauma bay which has trigger warnings.
Ellen:So this covers physical and psychological trauma. Physical trauma being injury, psychological trauma being also injuries, but things that resulted from various mental health conditions. So this one, as you can see, we have a few sort of signs and things up just because this can be an area that's a bit sensitive for people. Especially for younger school groups. We often just let the teachers know that the sort of things that are in here. We've obviously got specimens from injuries relating to self harm, or suicide or suicide attempts, and so we wanna make sure that people are aware of that before coming in.
Kate:There's also displays of x rays from unfortunate events, including lots of nail gun accidents, a misplaced Buzz Lightyear action figure, and illicit drugs densely packed into a pelvis. You really have to see these to believe them.
Ellen:We've got a couple of case studies or displays on particular diseases. So Covid, obviously, everyone who comes in wants to know about that at the moment. But also malaria, which is a really good example of an infectious disease that we have studied a lot and worked very hard to try and treat and prevent. And which also has had a lot of relevance through the teaching syllabus as well.
Kate:The display covers a wide range of topics, including the global malaria program, the potential use of genetic engineering to eliminate malaria and various prevention strategies. It also showcases other notable diseases like smallpox. There's also a bounty of information available on epidemics, pandemics and vaccines. All in all, it's a very comprehensive display, That sheds light on the importance of disease control and the advancements made in public health.
Ellen:We've also got a couple of displays on medical technologies. So some of those are things like joint replacements, artificial hips, artificial knees. Most people know someone who has a grandparent who has one of those. And things like artificial heart valves and pacemakers and stents, which again, a lot of people know someone with at least one of those things. So this is something that people often find quite interesting. They're like, oh, my nana's got one of those. Oh, my uncle got a stent.
Kate:I like these too because you can actually see where the technology, like a stent or an artificial heart valve goes on the specimen Next, my eye is caught by a display on vaping. It features a box full of different, brightly coloured vapes. Ellen tells me that curating this display was challenging, simply because there is limited information on vaping at the moment.
Ellen:It's one thing that we know is incredibly popular. And it's a little concerning because we don't have any long-term information on what the effect of that might be. If you look at smoking and lung cancer trends, what you see is that the trends for lung cancer follow pretty much exactly the smoking trends, but it's about 30 years behind. So we really might not know for 20 or 30 years what the long-term health effects of vaping are. So in some ways it seems safer. It certainly seems more appealing because, you don't have the smell, they look fun and cute and colorful, but we, we really don't know what it's doing to people. So it's one that we felt the need to highlight as a health concern, but we don't actually have a lot of information on what those health effects will be.
Kate:The display notes that already popcorn lung, bronchiolitis obliterans, And Ivali, which is Vaping Associated Lung Injury, have both been associated with vaping.
Ellen:We've also started to do a few sort of highlight specimens. So this is our teratoma with the hair and the teeth growing inside it there. Oh, wow. Out of the ovary.
Kate:The next highlight specimen we see is a black lung. This is exactly what it says on the box. An enlarged black lung.
Ellen:This one is from a 75 year old miner who you can see that these lungs are, they should be like a sort of reddish pink color, maybe a little brown if they've been in the preservation fluid for a long time. These ones are just black, like a blue black color, which is that's coal dust that he's breathes in for his whole life, and it's just worked its way into his lung cells now. oh boy. Yeah, you look at that and you're suddenly very glad for any work, health and safety, things that are in place. We have this one, which is definitely our biggest kidney specimen. So the kidney should be about the size of your fist, and this one is about 30 centimeters tall, And the look of it, it's basically full of holes. It looks like a sponge or a focaccia And all of those holes shouldn't be there, they're cysts. So just sacks of fluid. This is what's called polycystic kidney disease. And that's obviously going to really mess up the function of the kidney which is essential for us. If you don't have functioning kidneys your body will just shut down cuz waste products just build up and poison your cells. And this one over here is the trichobezoar that I was telling you about before. So that is the shape of the stomach right there.
Kate:So there's a plastic model of the normal shape of a stomach, kind of like a jelly bean shape. Right beside it, you'll find the actual specimen that matches the exact shape of that stomach, But, with a striking difference. It's actually solid and filled with dense black hair, Like a ball of hair that would form if you were to sweep up all of the hair on a hairdresser's floor and then scrunch it up.
Ellen:And it looks black, but we don't know what color her hair was. It could have been any color, but it goes black because of the stomach acid. Turns it black, but it doesn't break it down, so it just builds up there.
Kate:Our last highlight specimen that we see is one that really shook me. I'm not gonna lie. It's a series of different specimens from the same person.
Ellen:So we've got a brain, we've got a skin sample. So that started with a melanoma, a skin cancer, and then spread throughout this patient's body. So it's a 29 year old man who had this little skin cancer. You can see there's then the brain behind with the black melanomas throughout it. It's through his heart, it's through his stomach, his liver, gallbladder, lymph nodes, all through the intestines, the small bowel. and then through his endocrine system as well, the adrenal glands and the thyroids. So melanomas can be very aggressive. And this is a really good example of that. It's just spread through the whole body.
Kate:The specimens look like normal organs but are speckled with black dots, some big and some small, but they're everywhere, all over his organs, and they're melanomas, so, so obvious to the naked eye. The display reads that the man was 29 when he was diagnosed. He was treated for 18 months and then died as a result of complications from the treatment.
Ellen:So by the time those melanomas are identified, because it's so aggressive, it's often quite advanced.
Kate:So go get your skin checks and make sure you're getting them every single year.
Ellen:Because if they catch it early, you've got a really good chance of treating that effectively and that not affecting your life at all.
Kate:What's, what's this giant stomach ulcer?
Ellen:Yeah. So stomach ulcers are quite interested and they are caused by a bacteria. And the guy who identified that,bacteria he couldn't get approval or he didn't want to wait for approval to do testing on it. So he just like drank the bacteria himself. Ooh, And how did that go? And, well, he got a stomach ulcer so that sort of helped him confirm his, his theory. And since then he has gone on to be given, I'll have to check this, but I'm pretty sure he went on to get the Nobel Prize for it. But it's not recommended. don't, don't drink vials of bacteria. It's a really bad idea.
Kate:now there's a display of the consequences of drug and alcohol abuse. Ellen says it was part of the, part of the state personal development health and education syllabus. And so nicely relates to that with models of a whole range of different diseases related to drug and alcohol abuse.
Ellen:Some of those are direct causes. So for example, the alcohol abuse, we've got things like cirrhosis of the liver, which is essentially when there's too much alcohol for the liver to process. And so that starts to build up in the liver cells and damage them and causes essentially scar tissue to form on the liver. And so that over time stops the liver from functioning properly and leads to liver failure, which means that the blood is not going to be filtered of all the wastes and toxins that build up in it.
Kate:Other consequences of alcohol abuse include cancer of the esophagus, impotence, varicose veins, heart disease, inflamed stomach lining, damage to the central nervous system, and foetal alcohol syndrome.
Ellen:So some of them are direct, some of them are more indirect. For example, with drug abuse, it talks about diseases that can be spread through, contaminated, for example, intravenous drug needles. So things like hiv, aids or hepatitis. But it is important to note that those can of course, spread in a lot of other ways as well.
Kate:Other consequences of drug abuse include vein damage, vein damage, blood clot in lungs, heart infection, brain infection, violence, and birth defects.
Ellen:Yeah, it's quite a good display for getting people's attention, but then it flows into a lot of the other displays as well because things like, cirrhosis, we've got a lot of examples of that in our other section.
Kate:Ah, so, ever wondered about the origins of Typhoid Mary? Well, I certainly did. Luckily, there's a fascinating display here that unravels the whole story. Mary Mallon. An Irish born American was born in 1869 and happened to be a carrier of typhoid. Throughout her life, she unwittingly transmitted the disease to many families and organizations where she worked, ultimately infecting up to 122 people and tragically causing up to 50 deaths. Despite being asymptomatic, Mary just couldn't fathom that she was the source of these typhoid outbreaks. And after a thorough investigation, she was placed under quarantine for the final two decades of her life. Nowadays, the term typhoid Mary is used to describe people who unwittingly spread diseases or misfortune without realizing it.
Ellen:This, this one is quite interesting actually. So this is a, haemangiosarcoma and it's like a major growth all over the leg.
Kate:Did you get that one? It's a hemangiosarcoma. This specimen is from a 54 year old woman who noticed a few bloody spots on her leg about five months before amputation. These grew and then became firm and ulcerated. The specimen displays the left leg and foot, showing blistered skin, encrusted raised lesions, and purple discoloration. Put simply, it looks pretty nasty and unpleasant.
Ellen:It's a cancer of the wall, of the blood vessels. It's actually very rare in humans and it is really common in dogs. If you look it up, all the websites that you. Like given in your search results, we'll be from Vets So it's quite an interesting one cuz it's, yeah. It's not that common in humans. It did, does happen, but all the research on it is in dogs
Kate:Ellen, thanks so much for coming on the podcast today. I've really loved learning about all the infectious, I've really loved learning about diseases and having a look at the specimens.
Ellen:I'm so glad. Such a pleasure. Hope you and many more people will come back.
Kate:The museum is conveniently located on the ground floor and offers both stair and elevator access. Each specimen is equipped with a QR code that provides access to its case history, pathology, and more detailed descriptions, which are screen reader accessible. The Museum of Human Disease is located in the Samuels Building at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. It's open from 10am to 4pm from Monday to Friday. The cost of admission is free for students and 10 for the general public. One thing that I noticed that the museum does really well is how it shows the progress of medicine and changing attitudes over time. It shows pictures of old advertisements promoting things like lose weight the easy way with tapeworms and claiming that Lucky Strike cigarettes can protect your throat from irritation and coughs. It shows massive improvements in diagnosing and treating diseases as well as in public health. And I, I think I tried to approach this museum with an open mind and explore the collection with curiosity and objectivity, but it's exactly like Ellen said, I couldn't help but be drawn to exhibits that directly affected my life or those around me. and it's really amazing to have the opportunity to observe these specimens of diseases up close. so team, update your to do list for this weekend. Register to be an organ donor. Plan a visit to the Museum of Human Disease. And please stop vaping. Thanks for listening to Roadshow and Tell. If you enjoyed this deep dive into a specialty museum, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. We're a new podcast. So if you wanna help support us, please share it with a friend and leave a rating and review. If you are involved with or know of a regional or specialty museum that should be featured, please get in touch at roadshowandtell@gmail.com. I'm your host, Kate. Roadshow and Tell was edited and produced on the lands of the Gadigal people. I acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the various lands on which you may be listening from, and the lands that the museums featured in this podcast reside on. I also acknowledge any Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people listening to this podcast. I pay my respects to elders past, present, and emerging, and celebrate the diversity of Aboriginal peoples and their ongoing cultures and connections to the lands and waters of Australia.