Yesterday I went to a deadly museum… literally… they were displaying art out of dead bodies! It was not as weird and eerie as it sounds, on the contrary… absolutely fascinating.
They did this preservation with plastination – a new technology where they flow polymers through a body, which retains the bodys exact color and structure even to a microscopic level (theorotically, at least). Went with Ralf and Doris and met a few more people there. Unfortunately cameras werent allowed inside. The museum was in Oberhausen, around half an hour drive from Dusseldorf. On the way, Doris laughed when she saw me putting on my seat belt, asking if I didnt trust Ralfs driving, and I replied I only wanted to be a visitor in the exhibhition and not be a part of it.
They had built a special dome just for this museum, and we could buy a personal guide… a device that looked like a cellphone with a handle, which could be held to the ear and it gave out
commentary. Each item for display had a 3 digit number, and we need to enter the number in the guide, which would start talking about that item. Luckily they were available in English too. There was also a garden and some pond inside and it all looked very pretty.
The exhibhits were a bit spooky at first, but once you get into the technical details, you really forget about getting scared. In fact they were exact models of real people who had donated their bodies to science. Once I started hearing the commentry, it made it worth the 22 DM that I’d paid for the entry fee. They showed different specimens of hearts, an athletes heart, and a normal one, the athletes heart weighs aroudn 500 gm, a little bigger than a normal one. But a weak heart of an aged person is around 800gm, more than a healthy heart. There were bones with arthritis, knee disorders and normal ones, and we could see the comparison. Specimens of every part of the body was on display in glass cases, categorized on different tables.
There was the difference between a smokers lung and a non-smokers long, it showed the smoker’s lung dark coloured, almost black… and the (electronic) guide said smoking 20 cigarettes a day is like putting in a cup of tar inside the lungs in a year, and reduces 5 years of lifespan
They showed parts of the body with operations in it, they explained how the muscles and bones worked together to make the body move… all this was something I had studied in school and always wanted to know more about, and it was simply great to actually see the muscles, tendons, ligaments, bones all making the most beautiful complex design. We struggle so hard to make a simple robot which lifts something up and its like a joke when compared to the beautiful design and intricate mechanics of the human body.
Another thing I discovered was: we know that no two faces of human beings look exactly alike… but so also even the parts of the body are all unique. For example, no two livers are identical. Even within the body, its all bundled inside, and are not in the exact position for everybody. There was one body where the heart was turned in the other direction, similarly liver, etc… this happens in an extremely rare case, and in such a case the person never comes to know about it and leads a normal life… the only hassle is in case of a medical emergency, the doctors would get confused when they opened up a part of the body!
There was a seperate room where they had a message (in German, interpreted by Ralf) saying this room might be emotionally disturbing for some people. Inside was a display (all polymer models) of aborted babies who had died due to anamolies, and they explained various causes of this… all the displays there were from old specimens, such malformed babies are detected at a very early stage with modern scanning technologies.
There were various models showing different crossections of the human body, longitudinally and some presented exploded views… all showing the different organs inside and how they fit against each other. They were all very well organized… for eg, for showing the digestive system, they showed the crossection of the mouth to the pharynx, alimentary canal, stomach, liver which was so huge, spleen, pancreas, the intestines, the appendix, rectum… in exactly the same way they would be present in a real human, we could walk around each model and examine them from different angles.
The exhibhition gave an insight on the countless intricacies of the internals of our body which I generally tend to take for granted – usual tendency is to treat it like a Black Box. It also gave led to another realisation – that there were countless ways for something to go wrong!
The exhibhition wasnt just about anatomy, it was also a way for Dr. Gunther von Hagens… a scientist from Heidelberg, to display an art form. Hence some of these models were in artistic poses, for example, the display for the nervous system where we could look at the entire nerves system in the body was in a position of playing chess. The man for displaying the skin was standing there without any skin at all, carrying the entire skin in one hand as if it was an overcoat. They said the skin was one of the heaviest part of the body!
This was a very controversial exhibhition as many people protested that displaying human bodies as an art is unethical, and maybe the controversy attracted more people.
I bought a few postcards, and I just stepped near the doorway to talk to Ralf (who was outside), I heard some beeping, I ignored it and tried to continue to ask him something but the beeping was still loud and irritating. I was wondering which idiot was was making all that racket, but it turned out it was coming from the electronic gadget in my hand. This was because I had gone beyond the range allowed to carry it, this is to prevent anybody from discreetly carrying it outside! Later Ralf dropped me off by car at my hotel around 12 AM…
…and I didnt sleep very well that night…
“The democratisation of anatomy made possible by the Krperwelten exhibition has primarily been demonstrated by the fact that laypersons have reacted completely differently to the exhibition than was predicted by experts. The high numbers of visitors reflect the need of the general population to know more about the structure and the functions of their own bodies.”
– Gunther von Hagens
Breath by breath…
The lung consists of a dense network of tiny, densely clustered alveoli where the transfer of gases takes place. It they were laid out flat they would cover an area of approx. 100 m2. Cigarette smoke is hazardous for the alveoli. Smoking 20 cigarettes a day means that every year 150ml of tar (1 coffee cup) are deposited in the lungs and which will shorten life by an average of 5 years.
usire… usire… ee usisra kollabeda…
Website: Body Worlds
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