HUMAN BODY, HUMAN BEING CLOSED ON TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2010. STAY TUNED FOR A NEW EXHIBIT FEATURING THE HUMAN BODY, COMING SPRING 2010!

NMHM Opens 'Visibly Human' exhibit featuring anatomical and pathological specimens

"HUMAN BODY, HUMAN BEING" EXPLORES HOW THE HUMAN BODY FUNCTIONS THROUGH ANATOMICAL SPECIMENS AND MEDICAL ARTIFACTS
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"Human Body, Human Being" features preserved specimens from the major body systems and explores how the human body functions in health and in sickness through the presentation of diagrams, medical instruments, and real body parts specially preserved for scientific study.

"Human Body, Human Being" specifically examines many of the major body organs, including the liver, gallbladder, brain, stomach, colon, esophagus, lungs, kidneys, heart, and skin. The exhibition also examines each body system, and includes displays that focus on the endocrine, gastrointestinal, lymphatic, muscular, skeletal, and cardiovascular systems. The displays for each system also include medical artifacts and instruments important in the development of modern medicine and hospitals.

Visitors can compare a smoker's lung to a coal miner's lung, touch the inside of a stomach, view skeletons and skulls and a brain still attached to a spinal cord suspended in formaldehyde. There are a also live leeches, a display of kidney stones, and a hairball removed from the stomach of a 12-year old girl who compulsively chewed her hair since the age of 6.

The exhibit also includes mechanical and interactive video installations, such as the Visible Human Project (VHP) in which cross sections of the human body can be examined at a computer station.

The National Library of Medicine started the VHP in the early 1990s to build a database containing digital images of two cadavers- one male and one female. The male was a 39-year old convicted murderer who was executed by lethal injection in Texas in 1993.

Researchers scanned the body, embedded it with gelatin, froze it, then cut it crosswise into transverse slices 1-millimeter thick, about the thickness of a nickel. After each slice, the exposed body surface was photographed.

The result, the VHP, was completed in 1997 and is a series of images revealing the flesh and blood geography of the human body.

"Human Body, Human Being" also includes "Suspended Self-Portrait," an interactive sculpture based on the VHP's female dataset. Created by artist Carolyn Henne, a native of Richmond, "Suspended Self Portrait" consists of 89 long sheets of vinyl hung about an inch apart. On each sheet, Henne painted a single cross section of the human body. Henne created these cross sections by first molding her own body and then cutting the sculpture into what she calls "tiles." She then fitted the internal information from the VHP female dataset to her own corresponding cross sections. Henne painted organs, fat, and bones onto the vinyl sheets, which are hung from separate steel rods set into an aluminum frame.

Visitors are encouraged to move the vinyl sheets, because movement makes "Suspended Self-Portrait" appear to be floating.

For information about the artifacts included in the "Human Body, Human Being" exhibition, visit the museum's website at www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum or call 202-782-2200.

The museum is open every day except Dec. 25 from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. and is located at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Ave. and Elder Street, NW, Washington, D.C. Docent-led tours are offered to walk-in visitors at 1 p.m. on the second and fourth Saturday of each month. Admission and parking are free.