In Vienna, an exhibition tests ethics of displaying centuries-old human remains

The 'Madhouse' Tower of Vienna's prestigious "Narrenturm" Museum of Pathology. The Narrenturm, originally built as the largest and most modern hospital in Europe, now houses one of the world's biggest collections of pathology and anatomy specimens. Photo: AFP

A vast, bloated liver. An infant with lacerated skin. The deformed skeleton of a young girl. The recent renovation of one of the collections belonging to Vienna's prestigious Natural History Museum provided curators with a new test of how to display its vast trove of human medical remains, some dating back more than two centuries, without crossing modern red lines of ethics and good taste.

The collection of around 50,000 human body parts was first conceived in 1796 to help train medical students.