The goal of the two physicians and exhibition creators, Dr Angelina Whalley and
Dr Gunther von Hagens, is to provide preventive health education in a clear way.
With their popular scientific and practical exhibitions, they want to introduce the
human body and its functions to a broad lay audience and to show the effects of unhealthy lifestyles.
With more than 50 million visitors, BODY WORLDS is one of the most successful exhibitions in the world.
It has been touring the globe since 1995 and has made guest appearances in more than 140 cities in Europe, Africa, America and Asia.
The Creators
With their BODY WORLDS exhibitions, curator Dr Angelina Whalley and plastinator Dr Gunther von Hagens provide comprehensive education on preventive medicine.
Dr Gunther von Hagens' ground-breaking invention of
plastination and the combination of the diverse passions of the two physicians have created unique exhibitions that invite every visitor to reflect and consider their own bodies in depth.
Each BODY WORLDS exhibition displays around 160 to 200 real
human specimens, including a variety of impressive
whole-body plastinates as well as individual
organs,
blood vessel configurations and transparent longitudinal and cross-sections of the body.
They provide a comprehensive insight into the
anatomy and physiology of the
human body.
Organ functions as well as common diseases are explained in an easy-to-understand way in a direct comparison of healthy and diseased
organs.
They illustrate the long-term effects of diseases and addictive habits such as smoking or alcohol consumption or, for example, the mechanics of artificial knee and hip joints.
For instance, a healthy lung demonstrates the visible consequences of smoking when compared to a
smoker’s lung.
Whole-body plastics in real-life poses, on the other hand, illustrate how compactly muscles,
nerves and
organs are positioned in our body and how precisely the individual systems and structures inside our bodies are coordinated.
Independent visitor surveys in several exhibitions show the positive effects of the exhibition on the visitors:
Personal consequences resulting from an exhibition visit:
Even six months after the end of the exhibition in Vienna in 1998, the visitors surveyed stated that they had maintained the changes in their lifestyles:
The surveys were developed by Prof. Dr Ernst-D. Lantermann, Psychological Institute of the University of Kassel.
Thanks to the plastination technique, the interior of the body can now be depicted in more detail than ever before. The specimens remain dry, odourless and...
Dr. Gunther von Hagens ist Mediziner, Wissenschaftler, Erfinder und ein Vorwärtsdenker, der die Anatomie des menschlichen Körpers in beispielloser Weise einem breiten Publikum zugänglich gemacht hat.
