Body Worlds
20/04/2009
On Saturday I had the privilege of taking my girlfriend to see Gunther Von Hagens’ Body Worlds Exhibition – yep, that’s right we went on a date looking at real dead bodies! For those of you who don’t know, the Body Worlds Exhibition is a travelling exhibition, which has preserved donor bodies and organs using a technique called plastination, halting decay and leaving the bodies visible. It was an amazing experience and, although quite expensive, well worth a visit. Check it…
http://www.visitlondon.com/bodyworlds/
The tour began with embryos, foetuses and new borns, and progressed into old age, taking a look at individual aspects of the human body, there specific roles and qualities. Basically, the exhibition helped me recap my GCSE biology but the exhibition has promoted me to blog because you can’t help come away with a huge appreciation for how complex the human body is – even a 5 weeks in the womb. It’s literally amazing, and its right here in front of us all day and we completely take it for granted all the time!!
Being an engineer (well, nearly), I looked upon the human body as the ultimate in engineering masterpiece, with the best examples of materials, computing power, clever pumps and fluid flows, complex pulley systems, mechanical systems, control systems, damping and lubricating systems, protection systems, audio/visual systems and energy systems, and all of this confined into a relatively small and lightweight structure which has the ability to stand alone, be independent, make individual decisions, grow and reproduce itself over and over again but each time in unique and distinct ways.
I learnt loads and I’m half tempted to list off all these amazing statistics and facts I learnt about my own body, but the only thing I wrote down whilst I was there was this, written on one of the display cards, “The Brain is the most complex object in the known universe”.
And guess what, the universe is a freakin big place and you’ve just used your own personal brain to read what I’ve written with mine…
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Matt | 27/04/2009 at 10:14 pm
Gunther Von Hagens’ ‘Anatomy for Beginners’ is available on 4OD. Coincidentally, I watched an episode a few weeks ago. It’s very interesting, but definitely not one for the squeamish (and I admit to feeling a bit queasy and certain points). I’d be interested to hear your top five statistics about the human body! Here is one of mine:
You have 10,000 trillion (10,000,000,000,000,000) cells in your body when you are born. Most living cells seldom last more than a month or so, with the exception of brain cells and liver cells (although individual components of these cells are periodically renewed). “It has been suggested that there isn’t a single bit of us – not so much as a molecule – that was part of us nine years ago.” As Bill Bryson notes “It may not feel like it, but at the cellular level we are all youngsters.” (A Short History of Nearly Everything, p.453)