Out of body experience

In the traveling exhibit "Bodies Revealed," it is muscle, bone and viscera that define the human condition.

The show, which had its U.S. debut Dec. 1 in a former computer retail outlet on Alta Arden Expressway, is a stunner for the rare opportunity it gives the viewer to see the inner workings of the human body.

But it is also a show that offers a creeping feeling of voyeurism with each cadaver viewed, since what is being observed is not a reproduction, but the final journey of a life once lived.

The controversial circumstances of how the bodies came to be donated – together with the fact that almost all the cadavers are male and originated from a single region of China – tempers some of the great visual and educational appeal of "Bodies Revealed."

Without a doubt, this exhibit's under-the-skin view will be the best anyone will ever get outside a surgery room or a coroner's lab.

The show, which makes a deep impression on those who see it, would not exist if not for intricate dissection techniques and a process called "plastination." In the process, a liquid silicone-based polymer is injected into bones, muscles and organs to preserve them. In effect, plastination turns everything into rubber.

The 30-year-old process is economically feasible only in China, where the cadavers are readied for exhibition. Typically, cadavers take more than a year to prepare.

The exhibit is laid out in a sequence of rooms, each devoted to a body process, such as the pulmonary or circulatory system. Each room offers a plastinated, posed cadaver, minus its skin. The cadavers show muscles, cartilage, bone and genitalia for inspection. All the cadavers are posed in an activity, such as kicking a soccer ball or bowing a violin. All but one are male.

The musculature around the eyes, mouth and nose has been left intact, and even without the skin, it is apparent that all the cadavers are of Asian descent.

Much of the show's appeal lies in the details. In some displays, musculature and bone are peeled away, allowing better in-depth viewing of hard-to-see tendons and organs. Display cases, showing isolated parts of the body, are nearby. Each offers explanatory text. Unfortunately, much of that text is written in a cold, medical style, which may not be easy reading for children.

The cadavers in the show were donated to Dalian Medical University in Dalian, a Chinese city near the North Korean border, according to Roy Glover, a professor emeritus of anatomy at the University of Michigan Medical School and chief medical director for the traveling exhibit.

The Sacramento show has been popular since it opened. More than 1,300 patrons visited Saturday and another 1,000 on Sunday, according to Kathy Morgenstern, director of public relations for Premier Exhibitions Inc., which is producing and running the exhibit.

The show has instilled a sense of wonder in the patrons who have seen it.

"This is so much different than learning from a book, especially the way you can see things like the striation of the muscles and the capillaries," said Dawn Shepard, who came from Vacaville to see the display.

"I have never noticed anything this detailed in any textbook, in either college or high school."

But Shepard also had reservations about what she was seeing.

"I would have liked to see a mixture of males and females as well as a mix of other races," she said. "It would have made it more interesting to me to see more of a balance."

The exhibit's highlight is the circulatory system room, which offers a hard-to-forget, head-to-toe display of the entire system. That system is elegantly displayed floating inside a glass case filled with distilled water. The interlocking web of veins, arteries, capillaries and the heart clearly forms the shape of a man.

To accomplish this, the preparers bled out the blood and later injected the complete circulatory system with silicone polymer. Then, whatever was not plastinated – the bones, organs and tendons – was dissolved in an acetone bath and vaporization process.

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• Call Bee arts critic Edward Ortiz, (916) 321-1071.