Anatomy students and upper classmen interested in the medical field were given the opportunity to go to Body Worlds in Boston on Wednesday, November 15, to travel through the complex structures of the human body. Body Worlds mixes anatomy and art, combining the two worlds and creating a memorable experience of how body systems work. 

The bodies and systems found in this exhibit are all real human bodies, procured after people who passed away and gave their body to science. Body Worlds has received  around 20,000 bodies worldwide. These bodies go through a process called plastination. There are four steps to this process. The first step is fixation and anatomical dissection. This is when the body is injected with formaldehyde to preserve the body and to stop it from deteriorating. Then the body is dissected in the way that the artist wants it to be displayed. Then they remove the body’s fat and water. Next there is forced impregnation which is when the body is put into a bath of a kind of polymer that penetrates the cells. Lastly, the body is positioned and hardened. This process takes about one year to complete. 

Body Worlds does not only focus on the bones of the human body but also the nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, locomotive, and digestive systems. This exhibit also takes specific parts of the human body, like the heart, lungs and liver, and does a deep dive on just that specific organ. Some parts of the exhibit focused specifically on organs and their usual functions; however, there were others that showed what happens when things go wrong like a liver that has been taken over by disease or an outside influence. Students saw a smoker’s leg, as well as the lungs and a heart that had suffered a heart attack. Function and structure were both highlighted.

This museum also has an exhibit about the circle of life, which shows the body as it grows and changes. Students saw the development of a human from fetus to child. They preserved these babies from different stages of growth just weeks after conception through birth. 

 Artists took full human bodies and positioned them in ways that displayed different active tasks like skateboarding, archery, and running. It was fascinating to see how the different muscles and bones were positioned in order to make certain actions occur. Body Worlds incorporates art into the study of anatomy, allowing for scientists and the general public to look at bodies in a whole new way.