Museum features body-parts exhibit

Associated Press

TOLEDO

Preserved human organs and other body parts line the glass-enclosed display cases in an interactive anatomy museum that opened to the public this week at a northwest Ohio university campus.

The museum at the University of Toledo Health Science campus gives medical students, high-school classes and other visitors a glimpse inside the human body, The Blade newspaper reported.

“It’s kind of a unique thing, and probably a little scary for some people and might gross them out a little bit,” said Madeline Heald, a medical student who dissected some of the specimens on display. “But for them to be able to come in and take a look and see this is what’s inside my body is kind of a unique thing for the community.”

Stomachs, knees and spinal cord samples are among the more than 300 specimens on display in the basement space.

“It brings home what you tend to see in books,” said Hermann Simo, a fourth-year medical student who plans to be a surgeon. “When you are able to see it, touch it and feel it, I think your five senses are all intertwined and the information stays longer.”

Dr. Carlos Baptista, an associate professor of neurosciences, and medical students have spent more than a decade working to preserve the body parts through plastination, a process developed in the 1970s that uses volatile chemicals and replaces fluid in tissue with plastic resin. The specimens are dissected, dehydrated and then bathed in plastic and hardened, and the preservation process generally takes two or three months for one organ, Baptista said.

“We have to be conscious about the nature of the material that is here because it was donated by individuals that passed away, so we have to make sure that this is treated with a lot of respect,” Baptista said.

The parts are grouped according to function, and the museum’s design puts information about many common diseases on display, said Vipul Shukla, a medical student working with Baptista. An example of the effects of fetal-alcohol syndrome, he said, has spurred some female visitors to vow out loud that they wouldn’t drink during pregnancy.

A $30,000 renovation converted Baptista’s former anatomy lab into the museum, officially the Liberato Didio and Peter Goldblatt Interactive Museum of Anatomy and Pathology. It accepts public visits by appointment.