The Monstrous Nation: The 1895 Salon de Anomalías in Mexico's National Museum, 1895

Abstract

Abstract:In 1895 Mexico's National Museum inaugurated a new exhibition: a teratology (birth malformation) salon. The exhibit featured seventy-five preserved or desiccated specimens as well as photographs of others, many of which were featured in a guide to the exhibit that the museum produced. Various exceptional livestock animals dominated the collection, but the catalog also included drawings of a gigantesque man; another with curled hands and feet and crooked articulations in his shoulders, elbows, and knees; and a third with horns growing out of the side of his head. This article uses the salon's catalog along with correspondence from Museo Nacional staff, records from the National Medical School, and medical scholarship to examine the origins, motivations, and ideological orientation of the National Museum's teratology salon and its links to contemporary obstetrical practices and nationalistic concerns.