My wife has always liked medical things and has made comment on several occasions that she would have loved to have been a nurse. When she saw in the paper that the Bodies Revealed Exhibition was in Sacramento we knew we needed to go (even though we did the standard "do you really want to go?" at least 7-10 times).
This last weekend we packed up the twins with all of the standard diaper bag gear and headed down to Sac. We had called Amy’s sister and Bob (The Brother-in-law) and planned to meet them. We were a bit surprised to see such a small building as I was thinking museum type spaces. However the small accommodations didn’t detract from the displays at all. It was absolutely fascinating, the manner in which they preserve the bodies lets them do all kinds of creative displaying.
The process uses acetone to remove all the water from tissue on a traditionally preserved body. They then use a polymer in conjunction withe a vacuum chamber that somehow replaces all the water with the polymer. Your left with a plasticized mummy. With everything being plasticized you can remove bone, skin and other tissues leaving organs, blood vessels, muscle etc. My favorite one was the blood vessels (see image). You can’t believe how fine of a network runs throughout the human body and I was amazed that one of the largest concentrations was in your heel. On displays of the heart and lungs they even colored the arteries vs the veins so you could see how blood circulated out then back in.
When we bought the tickets they let us in with our strollers, but a few minutes in the head attendant nabbed me and made me check mine, thus having to walk around the entire time holding Trent. He is the lighter of our twin boys but at 22-23 pounds and as squirmy as a worm out of the ground, it was tough holding him for 45 minutes. He also wanted to touch every display we walked within 3 feet of. We got to talking with a sympathetic attendant that told us it wasn’t fair as there are people that come in all the time with wild 2-4 year olds and, in her opinion, that was worse. Interesting fact, you tip one of the displays over and it cost the exhibitor $1,000,000 to replace. Wow!
There is a great deal of controversy over this exhibit though. All the bodes are of Asian origin and word has it they are all obtained through the black market. You can imagine how they came to be on the black market too. Within the Asian cultures it is definitely a no, no to have your body treated in such a way as these have been preserved. I can’t really condone taking peoples remains and doing something against their wishes, but I would have to tell you that it is unbelievable informative and educational, beyond anything I learned in the class room.
If you get the opportunity to go I highly recommend it as you will learn and see more about the human body in 45 minutes than the average person sees in their educational career.
Tags: Biology, Bodies Revealed Exhibit
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