The museum is named after Gerard Vrolik (1775-1859), professor of anatomy, botany and obstetrics in Amsterdam. Throughout his career he collected misshapen skeletons, bones and organs of animals and humans, as well as malformed plants. “He studied their physiology and the faults in their development. As a professor in obstetrics, Vrolik saw many still-born babies with birth defects, such as conjoined twins or cyclopes, who have one eye in the middle of their head,” explains the museum’s curator-director Laurens de Rooy.

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