My favorite day of the year is coming around again! Monday, April 27 is National Hairball Awareness Day! The NMHM has 27 veterinary and 3 human bezoars in the collection. From April 27-May 3 the Museum will have several of them on display, in addition to the human trichobezoar that is out all the time. We have 3 human hairballs--from 12-year-old girls who spent at least 6 years pulling and eating their hair. My favorite is a hairball removed from the gullet of a chicken. Usually humans and ruminant animals develop hairballs. The one from the chicken is kinda special. The chicken used to hang out with a pet dog and would pick at its fur. The owner of the chicken realized it was having a "problem," so he cut out what turned out to be a hairball and gave it to us. Come on April 27 and you'll learn why bezoars develop--you'll see bezoars from a steer, a cow, a horse, a human, and a chicken!! And, we'll even let you hold one!
Visit http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum/exhibits/virtual/hairball.html to see our virtual exhibit about bezoars. Enjoy!
(Did you know that there have been medical reports of bezoars consisting of gummy bears, polystyrene, foam pulled from the backseat of a car.....)
1 comment:
AWESOME! I went there and it was AWESOME! A must see exhibit is the walter reed Medical Museum. It has a bunch of medical deformities and it is so cool. For example...has the bullet that killed Lincoln, a tongue and a pice of meat the choked the person, and a bunch of skeleton ranging from a 1 month old fetus to a 27 year old man. MUST GO AND SEE IT! Peace out
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