Love letter to an anatomist

[ageofscience]

To recap: when we last spoke I was simultaneously so bored with everything and yet riddled with the worst anxiety of my life. It was lame.

If only for the sake of this quest I'm on to Get Inspired, I thought I should write about the thing that makes me amazed enough to want to spend the next 5-7 years of my grad school life thinking about it.

Comments

[j_sin]

i saw body worlds 2 when it was here at the science center. it is one of the most awesome (in the true meaning of the word) things i have ever seen. i will never forget that experience

[ageofscience]

Seriously, everything about it was so awesome. Even just fact that I went to a science museum at 11:00 on a Friday night and it was FULL of people. PEOPLE EXCITED ABOUT SCIENCE! That rules!

Also, I definitely want to be turned into sagittal slices when I am dead.

[j_sin]

i went at 4am. the had to stay open 24 hours aday for the last few here, and ppl still got turned away!

[ageofscience]

I was there on closing weekend too! I couldn't believe it when we got there at 11 (which is already pretty insane!) and they were selling tickets for 3:00am. And I thought, "what kind of person who isn't me is going to come see this at three in the morning?"

And yet when we left, they were on to selling 4:00am.

The world definitely needs more 24 hour museumry.

[sakuramochii]

body worlds is in houston right now and i can't bring myself to go see it. my manager showed me a few pictures from it (on the internet) and i was ok with it until the man holding his flayed skin showed up on the screen. the area where his fingernails should have been on his skinned hands... totally creeped me out. and it disturbs me at they were real people but dipped in plastic (or whatever process they do to keep the muscles and tissues preserved). that the stripped person in front of me was a living and breathing creature but with its soul removed is a weird and creepy concept. hmm :( i do want to see it, but i'm afraid i would freak out.

[ageofscience]

I think it's worth seeing! I honestly feel like plastination as a process kinda removes all of the attributes of corpses that make us feel scared and grossed out. Everything seems more surreal and pretty than taboo or yucky or creepy.

Also it's set up so that you're really psychologically eased into it. First you see little parts of bodies, then you see slices of whole bodies, then you see the whole bodies themselves. Little kids abounded, and none of them were screaming or crying. They all just thought it was awesome!

[bezier]

It's sort of weird -- I found the disembodied parts to be more... creepy (words fail!) than the wholes. I think we might have talked about this vaguely? Once I got into the main exhibit it was much much more comfortable.

[ageofscience]

Yeah, totally. The disembodied hand was among the most unsettling things I've ever seen, admittedly, and it was actually the fingernail stuff that got me.

But yeah, once you get in, smooth sailing! Save for those skinheads :(

[_tingting_]

Body Worlds 2 was pretty cool at first, but then i realized near the end that there weren't any people of colour (that i can remember of). I didn't have to worry about it too much when the displays were stripped of their skin, but i found it strange that most of the eyeballs had blue irises! Some of the displays were less 'artistic' or 'kinetic' with the westernized culture incorporated (i.e. X-men and sporty displays). i think the work is amazing though! i like how they showed the comparison of healthy lungs and blackened lungs, BUT... it would be nice to see the comparison of the physically healthier person vs. the affects of fat deposits in areas of the body that can lead to harm (or is that not effective or too controversial for our society's view of our body images?) the exhibition was very different from learning the human anatomy in a 2-D textbook way or at Ottawa U's anatomy lab. it's alot less dry (and literally too) than learning anatomy in class. i've been wanting to go visit the anatomy museum at Queens U (

[ageofscience]

I would TOTALLY go to the anatomy museum at Queens! I didn't even know that existed

[j_sin]

"an overlay of a sagittal slice of a person of "average" weight and an overweight person...so I felt conflicted about what I thought it was doing/saying."

Here is what I got out of that.

When you are fat, it’s not just a layer of insulation around the midsection like everyone likes to think of it. It’s not skin->fat-> guts. The fat is omnipresent in the body so that the organs look like they are floating in a fat soup. Not to mention how disfigured and displaced the organs in the fat body looked. No word of a lie that was a helpful motivator for me to start being more bodily responsible and try to get into some kind of better shape.

[ageofscience]

I do think the public health aspect was his intent, but in execution I still find it problematic. Primarily, I don't think the world needs any more messages that fatness is gross and irresponsible. Wanting to be healthy is a good and admirable choice, but we shouldn't demonize people who don't make that choice. I also think it's important to remember that some degree of body fat is necessary and healthy and aesthetically pleasing!

Also, even at 120lbs (which is obviously way less than average weight for ladies and way less than average for dudes), a person can be slim but have lots of body fat. I weigh 120 and I still have all kinds of chub and guarantee my organs would look like they are floating in plenty of fat soup!

I don't know. I think what would be way more interesting and compelling is to show someone who is say, 170 and chubby v. someone who is 170 and super buff, and what that kind of difference looks like.

[i_like_audrey]

I WANT THAT TO COME TO AUSTRALIA GODDAMN IT

[ageofscience]

It's so up your alley! I guess it just means you'll have to make a trek to North America and come see it with me, huh?

Kind of relatedly- every time I see these things I still think of you:

[a_clear_job]

have you ever seen any of Henry Fuseli's work? i've seen a coule of anatomy exhibits that feature his drawings. his paintings are decent, but his anatomy drawings RULE (considering medical knowledge of the time).

[ageofscience]

I haven't! I am quite enamoured of old anatomical illustrations, though, so I will definitely look into it. Google isn't being so helpful, so maybe I'll have to wait until I have access to a university library again to do further investigating!

[a_clear_job]

well it's not so much that Fuseli was an anatomy artist per se, it's just that he had a remarkably good eye for muscle form and contour, often drew nude (mythological) figures, and his hatching / cross-hatching technique in his pen-and-ink, graphite, and etching works is brilliant. not that his paintings aren't great, but i have always been a fan of sketches and "rough" drafts.

try google-imaging "Fuseli drawing" - a bunch of good ones come up.