Share

What does a healthy body look like on the inside?

accreditation

A brain, trailing it's major nerves like thin grey tentacles. A peaceful, chubby-faced human head, perfectly intact except that it has been neatly bisected and opened to view. A skinned man playing a saxophone. A bright red, unimaginably delicate form of a rabbit, consisting only of its intricate network of blood vessels. 

These are some of the novel sights that await visitors at the Body Worlds: Vital exhibition now running at Cape Town's V&A Waterfront.

No doubt it will attract capacity crowds, as the show has done all over the world: over 42 million curious people have viewed various versions of the exhibit, making this the top travelling show in history – and one of the most controversial.

The special lure of Body Worlds is not so much that it teaches us more about our corporeal selves, nor that it allows spectacular visual access to the body that non-medics don't usually have – these are after all available to us by looking at models and watching movies.

What's different about this exhibit, and makes millions unable to look away, is that it is comprised, not to mince words about it, of corpses.

Plastic people

The specimens on display – from smokers' blackened lungs and drinkers' cirrhotic livers, to entire bodies – are all dead human tissue preserved by plastination, a technique pioneered by German anatomist Gunther von Hagens, Body Worlds' founder.

“Plastinates”, as such specimens are known, are created by removing water from the tissue and replacing it with liquid silicon. This renders them surprisingly free of the “gross-out” factor. These are not soggy bits and pieces lolling in discoloured formalin; the plastinates are clean, odourless and have a slightly laquered sheen. If you didn't know otherwise, you'd take these for very well made models.

But models they are not. The anonymous specimens have all been donated, mostly, according to Dr. Angelina Whalley,  von Hagens' wife and the curator of Body Worlds, by people inspired to do so after visiting the exhibition.

And there is plenty more material available for future exhibits: Body Worlds has some 16 000 potential future donors in their database.

Strange life in death

The most startling and controversial specimens in the exhibit are not the organs displayed, even those garishly distorted and discoloured by disease, but the whole body plastinates in dramatic poses.

These have had most of their skin removed to reveal underlying musculature, but certain external elements like noses, eyebrows and breasts are retained for "humanness". Vital boasts, for example, including a pair of figure skaters performing a skillful lift, a soccer player dribbling a ball, a chess player plotting his next move, and a copulating couple that leaves no doubt as to what goes anatomically where.

The function of the posed plastinates, says Dr Whalley, is to allow visitors to relate better to them, and see their own selves reflected.

Some visitors are bound to take issue with the plastinates on ethical and aesthetic grounds. Previously, the plastinates have been criticized for being in poor taste, or sexist (male figures are shown in more active, athletic poses; female ones tend to be more passive, or relate more often to reproduction).

On the other hand, there's a compelling argument that such exhibits engage the lay person far more fully and emotionally than traditional clinical specimens, and in this way their health messages pack a potent punch. The Von Hagens' are adamant that the main aim of Body Worlds is lay person education and preventative medicine.

Dr Whalley reports that surveys they have run with visitors six months after seeing an exhibit suggest that there are real public health benefits: 9% of respondents claimed they had given up smoking because of Body Worlds, while over 30% claimed they'd improved their eating or exercise habits.

At the very first exhibition in Japan in 1995, Whalley says, a young woman moved to tears by the experience told her and von Hagens that she had attempted suicide three times, but would never do so again having seen "how extraordinary she was beneath the skin".

WATCH: Body Worlds (not for more sensitive viewers)

Original post by Olivia Rose-Innes, Health24, October 2012

Body Worlds runs until 23 October 2016 at the V&A Waterfront, Breakwater Boulevard, Cape Town. The exhibition is open to all ages; children should be accompanied by an adult and have parental permission to attend. The plastinate of the couple having sexual intercourse is in its own partially enclosed space with a warning label posted outside. See the Body Worlds website for more information and to purchase tickets.

Read more:
A greener way to go 

Not just burial or cremation

We live in a world where facts and fiction get blurred
Who we choose to trust can have a profound impact on our lives. Join thousands of devoted South Africans who look to News24 to bring them news they can trust every day. As we celebrate 25 years, become a News24 subscriber as we strive to keep you informed, inspired and empowered.
Join News24 today
heading
description
username
Show Comments ()
Editorial feedback and complaints

Contact the public editor with feedback for our journalists, complaints, queries or suggestions about articles on News24.

LEARN MORE