Our Body: The Universe Within

I've been so excited to visit the Witte Museum ever since we moved to San Antonio. Somehow after 2 and a half years, we never had, yet. We drove by it last week and saw the advertisement for their current special exhibit 'Our Body: The Universe Within' . I was instantly positive we had to go see this. It sounded amazing! It "literally goes “under the skin” to reveal the mysteries of the human anatomy through a riveting presentation of ACTUAL human specimen."

As we walked through the display I was in absolute awe. Every part of the human body had been cut open, skinned, pulled apart, and preserved through a process of "polymer impregnation", which is basically draining all of the bodily fluids and fats, and replacing it with a substance that turned the body into plastic- more or less. "The process leaves even the finest, most delicate tissue structures virtually intact, down to the microscopic level, making the process invaluable for medical study. The organs are actually IDENTICAL to their pre-preservation state. The plastic is initially pliable, enabling the bodies to be placed in many different life-like positions, and then hardens after infusion. The specimens are completely dry and odorless."

I wasn't sure what to really expect. I had read about the display online, and was excited to go, but I really didn't know what I would see when we went. The first part were the arms, hands and legs. When we got to the hands, I got a little sick to my stomach - not bad, just squeamish. I looked at all the layers of ligaments, veins, muscle, bones, etc, and realized just how much of that I had seen a few weeks back when I sliced my thumb open. It made me a little sick, so I had to quickly try to push that thought aside, because there was no way I was leaving the room without seeing everything!

The full bodies were absolutely amazing to look at. They had been dissected in different spots, yet some spots left in tact, so you could see the actual eye brows and lashes. The hands had their original fingernails on them. It was so intriguing to look at these displays, and thinking, this person was once walking and talking and living their life. And now I'm staring at all of their internal organs and muscles and eyes and fingers. It was just mind boggling. I really don't know how to describe the feeling.

The organs were on display, with examples of healthy vs. diseased or cancerous. They still looked squishy. I was tempted to touch. I knew they were hard, but they still looked as real as if they'd been pulled right off an operation table- minus the blood. I figured, no one would figure out who actually set off the alarms if I just took one little poke. I restrained myself.

One of the most complex displays were the arteries and veins. Somehow, I really have no clue how, the were able to get the entire blood system of veins all connected, yet everything else in the body gone. It was like a pile of coral looking human veins, in the shape of a human body, hanging on a hanger, like a body suit. It was insane. I could have looked at that for hours. It truly did look like coral. We have our own great barrier reef right inside us! They also had the same display of just what is inside our lungs. I had no idea this is what the inside of our lungs was like. It was a coral reef of veins, shaped like lungs. Absolutely beautiful.

There was a special room dedicated to the pre-natal body. The unborn child. This room had such a peaceful and reverent presence. There were bodies of newborns who had made it through birth, but then died because of genetic problems. There was a table that had the fetus in all the stages from just a few weeks all the way to 37 weeks. I could have stood in that room for hours, looking at all the tiny details of the fetus. The skin was still so thin, you could see almost everything on the inside. I could see their tiny bones and veins, their organs, the wrinkles in their brains, the tiny little hairs that were starting to show. I don't know how anyone could walk through that room and still think that abortion isn't killing a human being. It was so sad to look at them, because I knew that each one of those babies were either some mother's loss and heartbreak, or given up willfully. It was really sad.

I learned so much in that hour or more, it took us to walk through. I didn't realize how thick our skin is in many places. I'd looked at real bones before in science class, but never ones that were preserved to be perfect like this. The inside of the bone looked like a different kind of coral. Underneath our skin, our belly-buttons are really big and funny looking, and look very similar to a newborn baby who's umbilical stump hasn't fallen off yet- I suppose that is pretty much exactly what it is. I learned a lot about or organs and what they all look like and where they all are. I'd learned this stuff years ago, but never paid much attention, and with a plastic model in high school, it's kind of hard to really understand exactly what I was looking at with this display.

When we walked by this guy with his basketball, Hayden started shouting at the top of his lungs, "ball, ball!" He wanted to play with it so bad! Everyone else in the room thought it was pretty funny. He started throwing a fit and getting loud. I thought people would get upset at us, but they were all so kind and understanding, and making jokes about how you didn't want to steal a ball from a guy who looks like that... kind of scary!

The one thing that kept repeating in my head, over and over, is How can someone not believe in God, in a higher being who created us? We are so complex, yet so fragile and vulnerable. The bones in some parts of our arms or legs or face are so thin and delicate. The arteries looked so easy to just snap. I know protective muscles had been removed so we could see these details, but it was just so hard to wonder how a mass of millions of fragile parts can make up our functioning body that is so strong and resilient. How could two rocks have hit and formed what I witnessed here? Not possible. The human body truly is the most beautiful and intense work of God's art.