okay...so this could be disturbing to some...I was freakishly afraid of it until I saw it in person...but I wanted you to check out the exhibit I saw yesterday at the Houston Museum of Natural Sciences...
It is called Body Worlds 3. It displays human bodies from people who have donated their bodies to science. Some people are skinned from head to toe...others just have their muscles attached to bones...it's incredible...highly controversial...but incredible to see in person. (This man on the left was skinned from head to toe and was actually holding his skin, INTACT, in his hand)
Gunther von Hagens created a way to preserve the human body called plastination:
"The deceased body is embalmed with a formalin injection to the arteries, while smaller specimens are immersed in formalin. After dissection, all bodily fluids and soluble fat in the specimens are then extracted and replaced through vacuum-forced impregnation with reactive resins and elastomers such as silicon rubber and epoxy,” he says. After posing of the specimens for optimal teaching value, they are cured with light, heat, or certain gases. The resulting specimens or plastinates assume rigidity and permanence."
I thought this quote from Gunther was interesting as well:
"The anatomist alone is assigned a specific role—he is forced in his daily work to reject the taboos and convictions that people have about death and the dead. I myself am not controversial, but my exhibitions are, because I am asking viewers to transcend their fundamental beliefs and convictions about our joint and inescapable fate"
The picture above is the deceased body of a human being! The displays are not roped off or in glass cases...I could get as close as I wanted...There were also human organs on display which depicted healthy organs, a smoker's black rock-hard lung, a breast with cancer, a stomach with cancer, (any organ with cancer)...it was incredible to see what it looked like in the body...in an actual human body.
This man on this horse was ridiculous! The man had been severed into three horizontal slices and he was holding HIS BRAIN in his hand. The horse had been skinned and was enormous! It was truly an amazing sight to behold. Check out the website: http://www.koerperwelten.de/en/pages/home.asp
2 comments:
That is very bizarre, but I could see how it would be fascinating, too. I'm a little weirded out by the guy holding all of his skin!! I bet that's an interesting museum!
I'm not sure what I think about this! It is pretty disturbing that if I donated my body to science after I die that they may use me in this sort of way! I don't want that!
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