Jasper Slapped: Day 27

Today was pretty legit. I'd say the class field trip of the day trumps all other field trips except maybe senior year anatomy when we went to see open heart surgery and visited the gross anatomy lab at UT medical school. Today we went to Guy Medical School campus, and to the Gordon Museum. The Gordon is the largest teaching specimen museum in the world and the school is the largest medical school in Europe. It was awesome. 3 floors divided into four blocks full of specimens a lot dating back to the Victorian era of different organs with different diseases. There is an entire room about tumors and the surgery performed before anesthesia was available. Many of the people had 20 pound tumors cut off in under 30 seconds, crazy. There are also wax models of various body parts for students, and of various skin diseases. Then the specimens are divided by system and organ and they cover all the walls of three floors. It was so cool, we saw hearts, brains, gallbladders, lungs, everything you could think of and the person's medical story and diagnosis was in available to look at too. The coolest section by far was the forensic section that showed what different organs looked like after poison, gunshots, stabbings and various other wounds. It was really cool, and the crime stories were in books from Medico-Legal. There was also a murder section with specific cases, an abortion section all about illegal criminal abortions, and an infanticide section about mothers who murdered their children. Everything was so interesting to look at, and the genetic disorder section was cool too. They had elephantiasis, conjoined twins, and basically any really weird disease you could think of. Seeing fetuses still in the uterus and newborns who didn't make it was unreal, but really interesting. I was amazed at how small some of these babies were, and how human the unborn ones looked. We also saw a lot of old medical and surgery equipment, so all in all the whole place was really interesting. The curator told us all about the screenings for medical school in the UK, these kids are 18 straight from A levels (like high school) and undergo personality tests and psychiatric exams before they can get interviews to go to medical school, so different from the US.
After the Gordon I met up with Ashley and Meggan and we took a train to Brighton, which is a cute little town with a beach. We shopped for awhile when we got there and then hit the beach, which doesn't have sand and has rocks instead. Now you may be thinking that a rocky beach sounds cool and less messy, well it's not. It hurts your feet a lot and is not very fun to relax on. The water was really nice though and we all wished we had brought swim suits. After a very short time on the beach we were ready to move on though. I will never again complain about sand haha. For dinner we grabbed food along the pier, I found a fresh seafood cart and got lobster tail which was delicious and really cheap. I put a garlic chili sauce on it and it was awesome. Brighton was a really fun place to visit and a good afternoon trip but not a beach I'd really go back to.