Body Worlds
While I was home for the holidays I saw Body Worlds at the Franklin Institute. The basic idea is that people will their bodies to Gunther von Hagens when they die and he preserves them and presents the bodies as educational exhibits. The first two thirds of the exhibit was a straight anatomy lesson and was very interesting. Each body system had a couple of complete bodies devoted to it, in various stages of dissection, but there were also lots of bits and pieces of bodies around to show specific parts or pathologies. The lymph system was sadly neglected, as usual, but the exhibit was plenty long without it.
Just looking at the bodies revealed some interesting things. I was surprised at how small both the lungs and kidneys are compared to the other internal organs. I was also surprised by all of the nerves shooting off of the spinal cord and all around the body. The display of a woman eight months pregnant raised quite a few eyebrows, but I found it quite educational. It answered the question of how does a whole baby fit in there (there isn’t much room to spare).
The various diseased body systems were also fascinating. Before the exhibit I was under the impression that functioning body systems were pretty similar from individual to the next. Not so. Just because you’re still alive doesn’t mean that everything’s normal under the hood. The surprise of the evening was the body’s ability to survive in the face of gross deformations of the liver, kidneys, heart, aorta, etc.
The last third of the exhibit was less about the anatomy and more about showing people without their skin in interesting poses. In addition, each “sculpture” was signed by von Hagens. This section was I’m sure what he was most proud of and his favorite part of the job, but I found it to be in questionable taste. It was interesting, but these were people quite recently. How would you like to see Aunt Wilma without her skin in a contortionistic yoga pose? I exaggerate, but you get the idea.