@[email protected] My favorite diorama at the old California Academy of sciences was a modern take - diatoms. Basically microscopic sea life.
When they built the new building they stayed with the historic versions. No more diorama of sea life you can't see with your naked eye.
I get the history. But we have wildlife documentaries and photographs in a way that was not possible 100 years ago. Why not show slices of life that isn't shown in nature documaries? A virus destroying a cell, cellular division, an amoeba stalking its prey. Tardegrades in their natural habitat!
Instead we have dead gazelles.
@Bee I really wish we would stop linking the discovery of germ theory to sanitary sewers.
Most major cities started installing sewers before germ theory. Remember - they put the handle back on the water pump during the crisis because they did not believe Dr Snow's science. Most accounts leave out certain details.
Sewers were installed because cities stank without them and people believed diseases were related to smell. Miasma.
London's big stink in the 1850's kicked off sewer construction. Not cholera.
The superstition of missma happened to align with science to allow progress. It's a bit revisionist to assume that level of money was spent because science showed it could help.
That golden era produced eugenics.