Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Review

2002; Wiley; Volume: 200; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1046/j.1469-7580.2002.00054.x

1469-7580

Gillian Morriss‐Kay,

Anatomy and Medical Technology

Bodyworlds: exhibition at the Atlantis Gallery, The Old Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, London, 23 March to 29 September 2002. Since the publicity surrounding the first exhibition of Gunther von Hagens’ plastinated human bodies in Japan (1996) and then Mannheim (1997), I had looked forward to its arrival in the UK. I was not disappointed. As a non-medical anatomist with 30 years’ experience of teaching from horizontal cadavers preserved in formalin, I was delighted by the upright postures and life-like poses of the plastinated specimens. Here are muscles the colour of life, not of preserved death, and wonderfully thought-through dissections (carried out on formalin-fixed cadavers before plastination) revealing aspects of the body’s interior while retaining the context of the whole. For the first time, non-medical members of the general public are able to see the anatomical structure of the human body in three dimensions. The anatomical and creative skill, and the sheer number of hours of work represented by this exhibition, are immense. The exhibition catalogue is fully illustrated and well organized, explaining the technique of plastination and its development, and discussing many of the difficult issues surrounding the public display of these human body preparations. The anatomical explanations accompanying the displays are pitched at an appropriate level for those with only a basic knowledge. In addition to the whole specimens, there are 3-mm slices of whole bodies cut in each plane, which are as beautiful as they are informative. I was less impressed by some of the pathological specimens, which I thought out of place here. Or maybe it was the open nature of the exhibition layout – if there had been a small room for tumours and another for orthopaedic prostheses, joint dissections, etc., their medical museum character would have seemed less at odds with the sense of life one feels with the whole posed bodies. I make an exception for the lung preparations from the smoker and non-smoker, which succeed in conveying the beauty of the lungs at the same time as their didactic message. Dissection of the human body was rare before the fifteenth century, and anatomical drawings and medical knowledge were correspondingly inaccurate. It was artists such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) who first made detailed anatomical drawings from their own dissections, making a significant contribution to the public acceptance of studying the human body from dissections. Andreas Vesalius (1514–1564), regarded as the founder of anatomy as a science, employed his own illustrator, Kalkar. Like von Hagens, he was also an entrepreneur and publicist, carrying out public dissections in his ‘Theatre of Anatomy’ in Brussels. The popularity of these demonstrations in the sixteenth century is testimony to the fundamental human curiosity to know what lies beneath our skin. Gunther von Hagens has restored to ordinary people the opportunity to satisfy this curiosity. He has been accused of running a Victorian freak show – it would be interesting to know what was said of Vesalius and other public dissectors in their time. Writing this review a few weeks after the exhibition’s opening, it is impossible to ignore the controversy it has engendered. The verbal and physical attacks are too well known to rehearse here, and have been repeated at each venue since Japan. Von Hagens, and by extension those who visit the exhibition, are accused of lack of respect for the bodies, an accusation that is hard to justify given that the donors were presumably seeking a kind of immortality in giving their bodies to be preserved and displayed in this way. Many people now choose alternatives to religious burial rituals; those who choose plastination and public display have something in common with the Parsees, for whom it is a religious duty that their body should be of use after death, or with those of us who carry donor cards. There will always be some who feel disgust at the idea of this exhibition, and some who feel that the viewing of bodies donated for dissection should be limited to medical students. They should not go. But is it anatomy or is it art? There seems to me to be a balance between the two that is different for different specimens. The muscles of ‘The Runner’ are partially detached and fly out behind him, giving the appearance of movement at speed; he communicates human exuberance, not anatomical accuracy. But the vast majority of specimens are exquisite dissections that retain all their anatomical relationships, except where parts have been displaced for the purpose of clearer demonstration. The revealed brain, spinal cord and spinal nerves of the sitting ‘Chess Player’ cannot be bettered by anything I have seen as a teaching aid of these structures for medical students. The gigantic masterpiece of the horse and its partially duplicated rider perhaps best combine anatomical information with artistic creativity. But most of all, the sheer beauty of the human body is displayed here, in a manner that is a joy to see.