Body Worlds Date

Katie and I decided that we're going to try to every now and then spend a little more than usual money on dates and do something that we'll remember. That's what we did yesterday. This may be a little unusual for most of your Friday afternoon/evenings, and for some of you not in a medical or other related profession where you have to take at least an anatomy class, this may be extremely bizarre, but I for one thought it was fascinating.

It's called Body Worlds and it's up at the Salt Lake Library right now (actually, a little building next to and probably affiliated with the library) called The Leonardo.

The exhibit is the actual bodies of people that have agreed -- presumably before they die -- to donate their dead body to Body Worlds for their method of education and learning for the public and bla bla bla ... you can read about it. If you can stomach such things, it's a fascinating view into how the human body works that you (again, presumably) normally don't see. And they had done an amazing job of letting you get a look at things in the human body. They somehow have an amazing way of preserving everything (for those of you who have been in cadaver labs, you'd appreciate how much better these look than your anatomy lab days). And they have preserved it in great detail, leaving very tiny tiny details intact on even their big displays. I was shocked to see that they had even somehow carved away the temporal bone to see the semicircular ducts in it (the "inner ear" inside the bone). They probably filled them with something that they carved the bone away from.

I'll spare the blog space and avoid telling you all the details of what we saw, but one of the particularly interesting things they did was to inject the blood vessels with some sort of red something material, and all I can figure is that they somehow erode and eat the rest of the tissue away when it solidifies, leaving a very detailed view of the blood vessels in whatever part of the body they do. In one of the heads they had, you could see the outside layer of blood vessels (above the skull) under which was a layer of nothing, followed by the blood vessels of the brain and surrounding meninges.

Katie and I spent over 2 hours in the place. They do a good job with what they do -- as weird as that may be. As a warning, taking young children to it may be a parental judgment call if not simply because of the very nature of what it all is, because they don't try to hide or leave anything out of the anatomy. Beings that none of us around here have children that age, I don't see it as being much of a problem.

Anyhow, it certainly qualified on the memorable date list. I'd recommend it to any who has the chance and is interested in such things. It was a benefit to have taken an anatomy class (twice, sadly) to know what the different things were, but they have an electronic audio guide you can rent if you want to.