Body Worlds

Body Worlds Exhibition, McWane Science Center, Birmingham, AL

Tuesday, April 12, 2016

One of the reasons for this trip was to visit the Body Worlds exhibition in Birmingham since it was not listed to be anywhere closer to Baton Rouge in the next several years.  The boys and I had seen it several years ago in Orlando but it was fascinating and Lyle had never seen or heard of it.

The exhibit is comprised of donated bodies, dissected and preserved by plastination.   The technique was developed by Gunther von Hagens in 1977 and is used to preserve bodies and body parts mainly for use as teaching tools for medical students.  Water and fats in the body are replaced by specific plastics.  The resulting specimens do not smell or decay, and can be touched and posed in various positions.  In addition to skeletal and muscle fibers, the plastinated specimens can be used to demonstrate the various organs and their placement in the body, and even the blood vessels and nerves.

The pictures below are not models.  They are actual human bodies and body parts.

The Open Man, shown above, shows the muscles and internal organs and their placement in the body.  The skeleton at right shows the effect of scoliosis, or curvature of the spine. 

In 1979 von Hagens first applied for a patent in Germany to use synthetic resin impregnation to permanently preserve human and/or vegetable tissues. Since then he has applied for further US patents in the area of preservation of biological tissues using polymers.  The Institute of Plastination was established in Heidelberg, Germany in 1993

There are four steps in the plastination process.  The first is fixation, in which the body is preserved using formaldehyde to prevent decomposition during the dissection process. 

After meticulous dissection to show the desired organs or vessels, the specimen is placed in an acetone bath under vacuum conditions.  This serves to draw all water out of the cells and replace it with the acetone compounds.

In step three the specimen is placed in a bath of liquid polymer.  Under a vacuum, the acetone boils off, drawing the polymer in behind it, and leaving each cell filled with liquid plastic. 

This specimen shows the arrangement of organs in the human body.  The lungs wrap around the heart, with the diaphragm below them.  You can see the liver at left below the diaphragm, with the stomach opened to allow us to see inside.  The gall bladder is tucked up under the left lobe of the liver, and the intestines folded in place under the major organs.

The specimen must be posed in the desired position using any number of ropes, wires, and stakes.  It is then placed in an airtight environment and the plastic is cured using gas, heat, or ultraviolet light.  This hardens the plastic and ensures that the specimen will retain its desired shape.

A specimen can be anything from an entire body or a particular organ, tissue, or a small sample of either.

Here the specimen shows the major blood vessels of the human body.  Subsequent specimens show the blood vessels in the hand, the liver, and the kidneys.  Even here, all of the vessels are not shown.  To do so would render the specimen opaque due to the incredible number of capillaries.

Below is a cross section of the kidney itself.

A major part of the exhibit was dedicated to healthy living.  The effect of smoking was one of the areas explored through plastinated specimens.  Here is a specimen showing the interior of the lungs.

Here we see a smokers body, and below it the normal lung versus the lung of a long time smoker.   Can you guess which one was the smoker?

Plastination is used at more than 40 medical and dental schools throughout the world.  Here the knee joint has been retracted to show a knee replacement.

The body below shows the structure of the major nerves of the human body.  Apologies for any shadows and glare.  The specimens were encased in glass and highlighted with spotlights

Many universities use plastinated collections of large animal species in their animal science classes.  Many of these specimens are body cross sections.  These are prepared by freezing the specimen and then cutting micro-thin sections which are then plastinated.  They are very useful as teaching tools in preparation for using CT scan technology.