Body Surfing

On Sunday, I visited the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and saw the Body Worlds exhibit. There were bodies everywhere. Real human bodies. And I’m not talking about the attendees.

Actual people had been preserved through some phenomenal process called Plastination. Their muscles, blackened lungs, tumor-ridden livers and arthritic spinal columns were all on display (along with perfectly healthy specimens).

I actually watched a man accidentally bump one of the bodies. It took me a second to register that he’d touched a former human being. Despite their intention of educating about the basic human form, these figures were fully dehumanized. It was so unreal to see the human body dead but not decayed that my mind refused to fully think of them as people.

The one exception was the fetus room. In there were unborn beings at different stages of development, including a woman with an 8-month fetus in her womb. There, a security guard happily answered questions, referring to a new figure that had just been added to a different part of the exhibit as “joining our family.” Spooky.

But looking at that mother, her skin gone, muscles and organs exposed along with the presence of a nearly full-grown child within her was truly sad. Two people had died so I could view that.

Of course, they weren’t murdered. In fact, the security guard said she’d willingly decided to give up her body for science. That didn’t stop one man from shivering as he walked out of that section.

This was all in the name of science and education of the masses. For East Coasters, the exhibit will come to Philadelphia starting in October. I’d say it’s worth checking out, but it may take me more than half a day to decide what I really feel about my day filled with people crowding around dead bodies and pointing.