Body Worlds

[Sorrell]

My friends and I went to the Body Worlds exhibit in Denver this weekend and it was incredible, disturbing, and educational I would say describes it best. If you haven't heard of it it's an exhibit where they take actual human bodies and preserve them through a process called plastination and then they are displayed. It was absolutely amazing. About 50 entire bodies in various poses, not in cases or anything, just out on platforms in poses. Then inside cases they had every organ, nerve, bone, etc in the body and they showed it in healthy and unhealthy forms.

They wouldn't let us take pictures inside, so these aren't mine, but i found some online and wanted to share with you all. Some of the greatest ones I couldn't find pictures of, but I got some good ones.

A pregnant woman with her fetus

A man playing chess

The jumper

I believe this was "The Thinker"

Smokers lungs and Healthy lungs

Basketball Player

A man with his own skin... they had one with a skeleton holding hands with his muscles too, that was weird

This is all one man and he was sliced intact, skin and all and spread apart so you could see all the organs and veins, etc.

Ski Jumper

Man, woman, and child completely out of the circulatory system

I just thougt of two more things to add... Everything on each person was real, including the eyes. The only thing man made was the iris, because apparently they cloud in the process. Secondly, all the bodies were doneated by the person themself and they even had applications there you could fill out if you wanted to donate your own body!

 

[wuvmybetta]

oddly they're not nearly as freaky as I thought they'd be when you were describing them to me, but still...yipes!

@ the applications!

eta~ the lips are all very odd!

 

[wendywc]

Rigor mortis sets in after 4 or 5 hours when someone dies, but then it does slowly go away. That's why funeral parlors can have people in the proper and nice resting pose. A friend of mine worked at a funeral parlor when she was younger.

Anyway Sorrell, looks very interesting. I think I've heard of this exhibit before; I'll definately keep an eye out if it comes to Texas.

 

[Sorrell]

I guess the plastination process makes them pliable and it said the artist spends about a year on each body. I don't remember exactly how it works, but I know the initial procedure is to remove all the fat from the bodies which they said is the catalyst for decay.

There was so much to take in it was very overwhelming, especially after a few hours.

I was telling Miss Wuv that at the beginning we all spent substantial amounts of time at every thing and then by the end it was more "pfft, plaque in an artery, who hasn't seen that" It really is something you should be able to buy multi-day passes for because there was so much information your brain couldn't handle it!

 

[jpedersen024]

WOW! Thanks so much for sharing that!!! It was an exhibit that I had REALLY wanted to see when it was in Toronto, but of course I never got there. I think it's an incredibe learning tool/ experience. (but yes, I thought it did sound creepy and macabre at first too)

I'm very sorry I missed it. The photos probably don't do it all justice.

 

[Sorrell]

Rigor mortis sets in after 4 or 5 hours when someone dies, but then it does slowly go away. That's why funeral parlors can have people in the proper and nice resting pose. A friend of mine worked at a funeral parlor when she was younger.

Anyway Sorrell, looks very interesting. I think I've heard of this exhibit before; I'll definately keep an eye out if it comes to Texas.

Go to www.bodyworlds.com I'm pretty sure one of them is in Houston right now. They have three exhibits that travel, we saw Body Worlds 2. Check it out it's amazing!

 

[steelhealr]

You can make your body available to science by filling out what is called a Uniform Donor Card. Don't laugh, but, I think you can get one at the DMV.

Galen and Andreas Vesalius were one of the earliest scientists to attempt to define human anatomy. Many times, graves had to be robbed to get the human remains to study. If you were caught, it was sacrilege and you could be put to death. When William Harvey defined how blood circulated through the body from the heart, it was considered heresy.

Now we can slice you up, put you on display and charge admission fees. My, how times have changed. (Fig leaf over my privates please). SH

 

[Lynz781]

wow thanks for that, really enjoyed it

 

[Captain Retardo]

We have one here near the Science Museum in Minnesota that just opened yesterday!

But not nearly as weird as a man holding his skin or a man sliced up into lots of pieces!

 

[GuppyDude]

I'v always wanted to go check that out, sounds like a summer trip to me....

 

[vancouver]

The guy holding his skin is big.. LMAO

 

[KathyM]

I think its fascinating, but how sad about the pregnant woman

 

[PlecMama]

Yeah that and the "man, woman, child" one, that is someone's baby
I am WAY more sensitive to things like that now that I have my own.

Anyway....Gunther von Hagens - what a guy. A very weird and odd man, but all the same, he had a series here called Autopsy, and that was amazing. He's so fascinating to look at too, I couldn't stop staring at him and his hat.

 

[wendywc]

An update: I got to see Body Worlds 3 this weekend at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. It was great -- very interesting. Thanks for planting the idea Sorrell; the show turned out to be only 15 minutes away from me.

Anyway, the key exhibits I got to see was: "Horse and Rider" which was huge with the horse in a rearing up position, the man holding his skin, 3 guys playing poker (one guy had a dead man's hand, 2 Aces and 2 8s -- nice touch), woman hanging on a horizontal bar above a mirror, complete nervous system meticulously removed from a person, ... the list goes on and on. There were lots of body slices; one area had a slice of a fat man next to a normal/lean guy. Seeing that one should make anyone want to get into shape; the big guy's organs (and well everything) looked squished in by all the fat around him. EDIT: There was some info about how this was a new process to be able to preserve the fat.

I really liked seeing the artificial heart valve compared to a normal heart valve and the artificial hip compared to a normal hip. It was astonishing how absolutely perfect people have made artificial parts; they were a perfect fit when compared to the natural ones. Anyway, I could go on. It was just astonishing details you get to see with these real bodies. Very cool.

Also, in case anyone wants to know, the Houston one is continuing until September.