How does war affect our bodies and minds?

How does war affect our bodies and minds? The creators of Broken Bodies, Suffering Spirits: Injury, Death, and Healing in Civil War Philadelphia, a long-term exhibit at The Mütter Museum of the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, wanted to provide the visitor with rare insight into the experience of losing a limb at this time in history. 

In addition to the display of anatomical specimens (including bones shattered by bullets), medical instruments, personal memorabilia from the war, and vivid eyewitness accounts and images, the exhibit invites the visitor to enter into a Victorian-era black-box illusion, with a 21st-century twist. 

The “Phantom Limb” experience allows visitors to configure their personal characteristics on a touch screen and then enter a curtained room in which they (and they alone) see their arm being shot, infected, and amputated, complete with phantom limb syndrome. Part parlor trick and part interactive technology, the illusion combines a conventional mirror with an embedded a video monitor displaying a historically accurate and anatomically correct limb.