Using Anatomy Field Trips to Augment Lab Experiences

Kathleen A. Nolan

St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY
knolan@stfranciscollege.edu

Ruth says, “Dr. Nolan, if you touch that steak and cheese sub, you’ll be sorry!” as I make a fake grab of her sandwich. The setting was Tony’s, a diner in Philadelphia famous for its steak and cheese subs, that was around the corner from the Mütter Museum, housed at The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

This has been the season for exhibits about bodies. There are now three museums or exhibits that I have seen that deal with this topic -- two are in Philadelphia and one is in New York. The Mütter Museum contains over 200 human skulls, as well as skeletons, pickled specimens ranging from brains to Siamese twins, and clay models of things such as a chancre on a penis depicting syphilis.

On November 20, 2005, twenty biology majors and I got on a 10 a.m. train at Pennsylvania Station in New York City and were in Philadelphia two hours later. The Mütter was, fortunately, only a few blocks from the station. This was a pretty easy day trip, and was planned through the Pre-Med Pre-Health Science Club which defrayed some of the expenses. The approach I took for this trip was to have the students pay me $20 at the station as I was handing them their $33 round trip tickets. This eliminated paying for extra tickets for no-shows. Admission to the Mütter was only $5 -- a bargain! The students headed back to town on a 5 p.m. train.

I actually coupled this trip with an overnighter with my family, as my husband was running the Philadelphia Marathon the next morning. While he was conducting this little endurance feat, I headed on over to the Body Worlds exhibit at the Franklin Institute. This was a truly spectacular exhibit. Whereas the Mütter has the feel of "venerated old musty museum," this exhibit felt "alive" and vibrant! A German doctor, Gunther von Hagens, invented a process whereby body fluids were first replaced with acetone, which was then vacuum suctioned off and replaced with silicon rubber in a process he called "plastination." This process makes the muscles on the bodies look real and supple. A book I purchased about the exhibit showed how the bodies were shaped into different poses through a series of pulleys. This exhibit, over $20 a person, might not be accessible to my classes, but last week my students were able to view a similar exhibition, "Bodies, the Exhibition," which is now on display only a few subway stops away from us at the South St. Seaport.

The chair of our department, Allen Burdowski, was trained as a hematologist and has taught anatomy and physiology for many years. He gave approval (and a check!) for our biology classes to attend this wonderful exhibit. He came along also and acted as a “tour guide” and regaled us with stories about the human body as we went through the exhibit. (Of course I added a few of my own). In both Body exhibits, the bodies were posed in different positions -- running was common to both. In both exhibits, the dissections were exquisite. This would be very apparent to any student who had ever done dissections. Many times nerves as well as tendons were beautifully intact. Both exhibits also had rooms of bodies that had only the nerves, or only the circulatory system intact. A docent at the New York exhibit told me that in order to depict only the circulatory system, a polymer was injected into the blood vessels, and then the bodies were immersed in a solution that dissolved all body parts except those containing the polymer.

All three museums or exhibits had many fetal specimens, which were quite fascinating. The Mütter's specialty was conjoined twins, which were also displayed in the other exhibits. One piece at the New York exhibit displayed the development of teeth in places other than the mouth, such as in the uterine wall.

What were the students’ reactions to the two exhibits they experienced? I think that they were genuinely fascinated by seeing actual organs and specimens on display, as well as seeing the perfection of some of the dissections. Most had an appreciation for how hard it is to do a good dissection, because all had at least some experience in that arena. They were especially excited about seeing human specimens, because they had only dissected cat or pig specimens. They felt that they really learned something by observing diseased or misshapen organs, and received a revelation upon seeing a smoker’s lung! At the end of the New York exhibit they were allowed to hold a real plasticized brain and liver.

The Universe Within, a similar exhibit that was displayed last year in San Francisco, was considered by von Hagens to be a “copycat” that contained some specimens whose muscles were displayed incorrectly. I have not yet read any of his comments on the New York exhibit.

Past exhibits of Body Worlds have been in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Cleveland.
Future Body Worlds exhibits will be opening this year in Houston, Denver and St. Paul.

The Body Worlds online store sells a 200 minute DVD set that depicts Dr. von Hagens performing an autopsy. I haven’t seen this, but I am considering purchasing it for our anatomy and physiology classes.