We had an action packed time this last weekend. It’s Karen’s spring break and we went to visit her sister Sue in Racine, Wisconsin. The day we arrived, Saturday, we went to see a movie, Vantage Point, which I will be commenting on in next month’s movie reviews. Sunday we went to Sue’s roommate Patti’s church for a performance of an Easter Cantata. Patti is in the choir and afterwards we went out to brunch. We could have ordered some fancy entres but most of us were so stuffed that we couldn’t even think of it. In the evenings we played Mah Jongg. We haven’t played for quite some time so that was kind of a treat. I don’t think I won even one hand in all the games we played.
The highlight of this little adventure was our trip to Milwaukee on Monday. We went to see Body Worlds at the Milwaukee Public Museum. In 1977 a doctor, Gunther von Hagens, invented a process he calls plastination. He processes cadavers and preserves them by filling them with resins and elastomers. He developed the process primarily as a teaching tool for anatomy students but he soon discovered that the general public was just as fascinated as professional collegues.
Mostly he removes the skin from the body and poses it to reveal the muscular structures. But he also does much more. I expected the show to be mostly entertainment, seeing the bodies posed to play football or on the rings or playing chess, which was all there. But the exhibit was mostly a teaching tool. The entire digestive tract was removed and laid out for you to see all its parts. Or you could see cross sections of the brain. Or you could see all the major blood vessels.
It was a great learning experience. We rented the commentary devices. You punch in a number at each exhibit and it tells you what you are looking at. I would highly recommend doing that if you ever get to see one of these shows. One of the most interesting but most controversial parts was the section dealing with pregnancy and fetal development. Enough people found it objectionable that they put it in a separate room.
I would have found the pregnancy one as facinating as you did
YUK !
I went to see a similiar show in Las Vegas last summer. In the one I saw, all of the plasticised cadavers were Asian. Some were very short and I thought they may be children, but they were old women. I really loved the exhibit also.