Children's questions inspire exhibition about poo

The exhibition explores the cultural and medical importance of poo

Questions from primary school children, such as "Why is poo so smelly?", have formed the basis of a medical exhibition.

Among the artefacts in POO! at the Thackray Museum of Medicine in Leeds are faeces encased in resin on loan from the National Poo Museum.

Curator Jack Gann said the children asked some surprising questions, such as "Why is it called poo?" and "Does poo go mouldy?"

He said: "These are all things that I don't know. So we had to go to scientists and historians."

Mr Gann added: "The children were much more curious than we thought.

"People might feel uncomfortable asking some of these questions, but they're not silly questions.

"I was really pleased the children felt increasingly free to throw out big questions and that curiosity is what we're looking to in our audience and what we hope that exhibitions like this reward.

"It's not just us telling them what to think. It's them asking questions and searching for answers."

Mineralised human waste from was excavated by the York Archaeological Trust

The exhibition also features a 12th Century Medieval poo, a proctogram chair -designed for inspecting the rectum - and Victorian constipation cures.

It was curated with children from Harehills Primary School, one of nine local schools the Thackray works in partnership with.

Other questions the children posed included: 'Why is a fart colourless?', "How do you get constipated?" and "why is poo brown?"

Mr Gann said the "why is poo so smelly?" question inspired his favourite item in the exhibition.

He said: "Skatole, which is the chemical component that makes poo smell, is obviously a nasty smell when you get it in poo, but in a different amount it's actually very pleasant.

"It's in a lot of flowers and perfumes. So because we have collections that touch on that we can display some things that smell of poo but smell good.

"One of the objects on display is the anointing oil that's used at the Royal Coronation, which is full of those floral ingredients, which all have skatole as a chemical compound in them.

"So we get to ask: does this smell of poo, does it make the King smell of poo?"

The exhibition includes unusual items made from poo, such as this soap

He added another recurring theme among the children was "Why is poo disgusting?", something the team had to ask historians to look into.

"We talked to a couple of different historians about this, about how it's not necessarily disgusting in every culture, how you're not born naturally finding it disgusting.

"That's kind of a learned thing that we do socially, because obviously it carries a lot of disease. So you learn that that's probably not a thing you want to put in your mouth."

'POO!' runs at the Thackray Museum of Medicine from 26 July to 4 January 2026.

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