Day Trips

“Body Worlds” at the Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas takes the visitor on an incredible journey through the human body. You would have to go to medical school to have a more complete view into the composition of human muscles, organs, and fatty tissue.

The body is a miraculous machine. It is amazing that these blobs of mass (called plastinates) were once living, breathing people. Dr. Gunther von Hagens has been preserving tissue in polymer since 1977. With the body solidified, a team of experts can do remarkable things like remove the muscles from the skeleton or cut the brain in slices so thin that light can pass through.

“First and foremost we’re an educational endeavor,” Dr. von Hagens told a group of journalists at the end of a tour of the exhibit. “I want to make you sensitive to your body.”

With more than 200 views of the human body on display, the exhibit leaves very little to the imagination. Without the gore, the guts don’t invoke much reaction in the squeamish. If you did not know that these were real people who donated their bodies to science, the specimens would appear to be waxlike mannequins.

But these were once real people, and that is what makes the exhibit extraordinary. Every body is unique in its own way, Dr. von Hagens says. “You can’t get this level of detail in models.”

By replacing the human fluids and soluble fats with resins and elastomers, Dr. von Hagens can encase the tissue in plastic. The goal was to substitute donated cadavers, which only last about 200 days, with plastic specimens that will last 100 years. The result is an in-depth lesson into how our bodies are built and function.

All of the bodies used in the exhibition came from donors who bequeathed their remains to Dr. von Hagens’ laboratory in Germany. When a woman realized she and her unborn child would not survive her illness, she donated one of the most startling and instructional displays in the exhibit. By prior agreement, only one of the body donor’s cause of death is revealed. “Without the outer layer of skin, a close relative would not be able to recognize a family member in the exhibit,” Dr. von Hagens says.

The most Dr. von Hagens would divulge was that the rider on the horse was a European journalist who died in his 40s from carcinoma of the eye. Using Leonardo da Vinci’s sculpture of a horse and rider as inspiration, Dr. von Hagens mounted the exposed man on an equally peeled and prancing 1,763-pound horse. The combination shows the similarities of the two animals and the beauty of the body under the top layer.

In a way, this is a show of the finest art ever produced. The body is a masterpiece of creation. The exhibit does not denigrate the lives of the donors but rather celebrates the beauty of the body. There is something marvelously comforting in seeing the human heart surrounded by the lungs as if in a pair of hands. The body reveals intricate patterns, when sliced wafer thin, that somehow created life.

Whether it is the still-born fetuses, the blackened smoker’s lung, or the various stages of a diseased liver, Dr. von Hagens says he hopes that the exhibit will help visitors start open and frank discussions about the body. What better way to understand a tumor than to see one?

Of course, with any kind of exhibit using human specimens, there are going to be ethical and moral questions. “The only controversies have been raised by the media,” Dr. von Hagens says, “not from people who have been through the exhibit.” A reverent whisper descended over the crowd as it milled through the labyrinth of displays. As the living peered into a body much like their own, everyone seemed more amazed than startled.

“Body Worlds,” the anatomical exhibition of real human bodies, continues at the Museum of Nature and Science at Fair Park in Dallas through May 28. General admission for timed tickets ranges from $19 to $21.50. For more information, call 214/428-5555, or go to www.natureandscience.org or www.bodyworlds.com.

This article appears in February 9 • 2007.