Exploring BODY WORLDS

BODY WORLDS: The Original Exhibition of Real Human Bodies is a series of educational exhibits that have toured 40 cities around the world and attracted nearly 25 million visitors. The exhibits are the brainchild of anatomist and scientist Dr. Gunther von Hagens. In 1977, he invented the process of plastination, which allows anatomical specimens to be preserved without formaldehyde. During plastination, the specimen is drained of all bodily fluids and soluble fats, injected with resins and elastomers under vacuum conditions, and then hardened by curing with light, heat, or gases. This process preserves the natural appearance of the tissues, and has allowed von Hagens to create lifelike poses. The bodies displayed were willed to BODY WORLDS for the express purpose of being used in the exhibits, and the only exceptions were a few specimens acquired from anatomical collections and anatomy programs.

BODY WORLDS premiered in Tokyo in 1995, made its American debut in Los Angeles in 2004, and its Canadian debut in Toronto in 2005. BODY WORLDS 2 ran for five months at the Ontario Science Centre, and I was one of the exhibit's many visitors.

The exhibit began in a long corridor that gave a brief history of the study of anatomy from the Middle Ages to the present, with a few antique specimens scattered among the texts and illustrations. At the end of the corridor was a specimen that showed all the nerves in the body, each white filament forming part of the network that once enabled the person to move, think, and breathe. Then, like moving from the Dark Ages to the present, I stepped out of the dim corridor and into the exhibit proper. More than 200 specimens were on display in a two-storey atrium, including individual organs, vertical and horizontal body slices, and 25 bodies in various poses.

Greeting me at the entrance was a plastinated man languidly reaching up in a stretch. From his head to his feet, each muscle was exposed, along with his ligaments and bones. Von Hagens had argued that real bodies were better educational tools than models, because viewers would connect with them on an emotional level, and the specimens would showcase the uniqueness of each human body. A closer look at the stretching man revealed that he had polydactyly, with six fingers on each hand and six toes on each foot. A number of bodies were in dynamic poses to show how our muscles are used in everyday life. The Skateboarder was a young man with a skateboard frozen in a one-armed handstand, and the Ballerina was a woman posed on one leg, with her back arched. One woman held the yoga bridge pose which I've done myself, while the Skier soared through the air, suspended from the ceiling by invisible wires. Other bodies, like the Ponderer, were displayed in static poses. He sat with his right leg crossed over left knee, one hand raised in contemplation, and his brain visible for the world to see.

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I'd been warned that I might need a strong stomach for the exhibit, but all of the displays inspired fascination, not queasiness. It was clear that each body had once been a living person, and some still retained hair and eyelashes. But plastination transformed them into a combination of science and art, like anatomy illustrations that have sprung to life.

I have a good general understanding of anatomy and physiology, but a few things in the exhibit still surprised me. One section showed the development of the embryo, and I was startled to see that an embryo the length of my fingernail already had an identifiable head and limbs. The body of a pregnant woman was also on display, revealing the fetus still in her womb. Another display showed the network of blood vessels in the head and brain, and I was awestruck by its intricate beauty. There was even a "hands on" section where I could hold a plastinated liver and run my fingers across a cross-section of plastinated thigh tissue.

One of BODY WORLDS' aims is to educate people about health and how lifestyle choices affect the body. Seeing a blackened lung side-by-side with a healthy one was a powerful reminder of smoking's harmful effects. A vertical slice of the entire body of a 136-kilogram (300-pound) man next to a normal-weight man was an eye-opening way of showing how morbid obesity affects all the organs and systems of the body. An elderly man's body was displayed with a pacemaker and an artificial hip – the medical devices that had enabled him to function in his later years.

BODY WORLDS gave me a newfound appreciation for how amazing the human body is, and how it is simultaneously tough and fragile. As von Hagens said, "Plastination anatomy is beauty beneath the skin, frozen in time between death and decay. It opens the heart to our inner self and makes us fall in love with our own body."

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