RESURRECT DEAD ON PLANET JUPiTER

Harriet Cole

I have a new hero. Actually hero is too light a word. I have a new deity. To her I will direct all my energy and feelings of entrapment, desperation and deep, unyielding frustration.

Her name is Harriet Cole. During the breathing and walking part of her life, she worked as a cleaning lady at Philadelphia’s Hahnemann Hospital.

Eventually she died.

What happened next is a vision of hell on a level far surpassing the imagination of even the greatest of German existentialists. Having donated her body to science, Ms. Cole was carefully dissected. Dr. Rufus B. Weaver worked for months, slowly and methodically extracting and preserving her nervous system. He then mounted the results and hung it up for display. Nearly 120 years later, poor Harriet’s nervous system still watches over the halls of Hahnemann Hospital.

Hell

Having your body permanently interned in the place where you worked a horrible and thankless job is a dark enough vision. But to remain only as a nervous system, bulging eyes, spinal cord and dozens of dangling nerve fibers is a revelation so grotesque and horrible, that the power that it generates is strong enough to bring life to a new deity. Or so I believe.

Please help spread the word of this unacknowledged god and be sure to pay your respects. When you feel that your world is closing in and that you’re stuck in a metaphysical vortex of dull and anxious fear, just meditate on poor Harriet down at Hahnemann Hospital and know that she was carefully dissected for your sins.

I went to see Harriet last week. My intention was to get some better photographs than I could presently find on the internet. Unfortunately they close off her room off at 5PM. I peered through the glass into her darkened chamber. She was in there doing her thing, but I couldn’t get any closer. So remember, if you visit Harriet, you have to go between 9AM and 5PM, Monday – Friday.

But really, how could it be any other way?