Remarkable exhibit is the result of 'plastination'

First off, it's called "plastination." Neither the process for plasticizing biological remains now on display at The Leonardo in downtown Salt Lake nor the word existed before 1977.

Both are the multi-patented creations of German scientist Guenter von Hagens, a doctor, polymer chemist and hemophiliac originally from what is now western Poland. He became interested in medicine as a young boy during a six-month hospital stay when he continually hemorrhaged from a small cut.

It wasn't a case of "physician, heal thyself," but an idea for a better way for medical students to examine the inner workings of humans in particular. A way to permit the close, extensive examination of organs, their structure and the multi-myriad intricacies of our internal terrain, which had been limited mostly to models and specimens encased in plastic that were even less detailed than the 1,200 two-dimensional drawings and engravings in the 1918 medical student bible, Gray's Anatomy.

"Dr. von Hagens managed to develop and perfect a high-tech interface of the medical discipline of anatomy and modern polymer chemistry," Lisa Davis, spokeswoman for The Leonardo where Body Worlds 3 is on display, told the Deseret News. "Some people might think it's morbid, but his work and the exhibit brings us face to face with the wonder of the human body and our own mortality that is stunning and ultimately life-affirming."

Plastination allows polymers to preserve individual organs and tissues down to the cell, halting decomposition with specially designed chemical reactions combined with 20 different unique polymers that starve out the natural colonizing putrefaction bacteria after death.

Von Hagens' process begins after the skin as been removed and the internal parts have been completely dissected. The trick to plastination is its ability to overcome the natural chemical incompatibility of bodily fluids and plastic. Von Hagens developed a way to exchange water in the tissues — which makes up 70 percent of the human body — and fatty tissues with the quickly evaporating solvent acetone.

Dr. Angelina Whalley, creative and conceptual designer of the exhibition, director of the Institute of Plastination in Heidelberg, Germany, and wife of von Hagens, said the key to the success of the process is the "forced vacuum impregnation" of the plastic into each and every cell.