As we start our last week in Paris, I thought it would be a good time to post a throwback about our first trip to the Musée Fragonard d’Alfort, or the veterinary museum. As you may have seen from other posts, this collection consists of anatomical models as well as animal oddities. At the end of the tour we reached the Fragonard exhibit, where we found flayed bodies of horses and men preserved by Honoré Fragonard, an anatomy professor of the school. Not only could we see each blood vessel and muscle fiber, but the nerves from the bodies had been removed and displayed separately. As neuroscientists, having the chance see just how long and delicate our nerves really are in comparison to the entire body was quite an experience, particularly in seeing the sciatic nerve, which runs all the way from the spinal cord to the feet.
