Ever wonder what organs look like after being invaded by a disease? Have a look.

Inside a little-known Vancouver museum, the lungs of a young girl are preserved in a Plexiglas container, and if you look really closely you can see a peanut lodged in one of her airways.

“She was four years old and she went for a playdate, during which her friend gave her some peanuts,” said Dr. Jennifer Kong, curator of the UBC David F. Hardwick Pathology Learning Centre.

A short time later, the girl died.

When nursing and medical students tour the museum filled with more than 2,000 human organs, Kong highlights this case to show there is a simple way to diagnose this problem, which would have saved the girl’s life: Listening to the lungs with a stethoscope would indicate the right side was no longer taking in air.

“Choking doesn’t always manifest itself in the same collection of symptoms,” said Kong, who is a pathology instructor at UBC and BCIT.