There are few things as disturbing to the average human being as seeing a fellow citizen sliced open, hacked up, organs rearranged, and otherwise disemboweled and disrespected. As it stands these days, one shouldn’t usually be able to view a contemporary’s insides protruding from an open chest cavity, nor have to pull back at the sight of an acquaintance’s entire body gruesomely cut lengthwise with buzzsaws into 7 or 8 long strands of used-to-be-alive-human flesh. One shouldn’t have the opportunity to remark upon bodies with skin peeled off, revealing muscle and reddish tissues beneath, with chunks of meat and organs removed for reasons of “scientific curiosity”.
One certainly shouldn’t be able to hold a fellow being’s naked brain in one’s hand, noting the gummy, weightiness of it. Not if he were alive, anyway.
Luckily for us, and all those who come the visit the mutilated bodies of the now rather famous (or is it perhaps infamous?) blending of science, art and surgical precision that is the Mysteries of the Human Body exhibit, the defamed corpses alluded to above are in fact quite dead. Which is good, because they wouldn’t want me poking around their internal organs (at least, not without permission) were they still alive.
The astonishing work done by the craftsman and surgeons who put together this exhibition is mightily impressive. Corpses have been preserved via a special mummification-like drying technique and assiduously removed of specific organs, whether it be a completely intact set of blood vessels, a brain, a set of smoke-blackened lungs, or a complete splaying of major muscle groups and tendons, revealing the bone structures beneath.
A curious journey through the artform of the human form, the exhibit puts one very directly in touch (literally, even) with one’s biological structure, the human being’s ultimately physical nature. It is a fabulous adventure. Deceased fetuses in various stages of arrested development adorn one display case while in another, some poor fellow’s face has been removed and chest cavity torn open, exposing his innards for all to see. Still another showcases a few freeze-dried penises and lumps of cancerous growths in someone’s brain, lungs, liver and other various meaty places. There is also a well-preserved brain for eager participants to hold in their hands and admire the weight of it. Finally, there is one particularly well-preserved specimen, removed of all its skin, and mummified to the point of almost beef jerky-ness, that is apparently the “display model”, open for all to touch, prod, poke, etc. This exhibit basically shows you all the things you don’t ever want done to your own body (but how fascinating it is to see it done to someone else’s!).
