The individual on whom the demonstration
was performed had, before his death, enrolled on von Hagens’
body donor programme and consented to the use of his body for public
education in anatomy, including public demonstration. A plaster
mask was placed over the face to preserve anonymity.
The theme of this dissection was movement.
The body was opened to reveal the muscles, tendons,
ligaments and bones that interact to make up the mechanics of movement.
Also revealed were the brain and spinal cord that drive and coordinate
movement along with peripheral nerves that convey instructions from
the central controllers to the muscles.
In this demonstration, Dr von Hagens placed the
body in an upright position using a head clamp and ropes to suspend
it from an overhead frame. It’s unusual to perform a dissection
on a body in this position. For practical reasons, they are usually
performed on bodies lying flat on a dissection table. However, the
systems of movement can only be effectively revealed for a public
demonstration when the body is in this vertical position. Medieval
artists would have been familiar with cadavers that were suspended
vertically so that they could be sketched. Oddly enough, few people
today, including professional doctors and anatomists, will have
witnessed an upright dissection.
The body hadn’t been preserved with
a fixative but had been stored frozen. This allowed for a demonstration
of movement, which wouldn’t have been possible after fixation
due to tissue stiffness.
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