Most visitors to Las Vegas have an idea of what they want to do before they get here. There’s gaming, of course, and destination dining. There are shows wherever one stays and shopping within walking distance of any GPS coordinates on the Strip. There are golf tee-offs to schedule and salon or spa appointments to make, while more casual afternoons can be spent checking out attractions such as Titanic and Bodies … The Exhibition.
While the former will hit the spot for fans of James Cameron’s 1997 film epic, the latter provides an option to leisurely while away an hour of daytime while expanding one’s knowledge about anatomy. Bodies breaks down the systems that make up the whole of human beings into sub exhibits, deconstructs the physical makeup of the organs that work together to create the organisms that are us, and displays dissected biped specimens that once walked the Earth.
Preserved cadavers may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but Bodies provides an opportunity for people who were or are interested in medicine or osteopathy to spend a fascinating hour among muscles, bones, brains, pulmonary parts, and digestive features. A polymer process enables the exhibition of corporeal subjects in various states of dissection, with one separated into a standing stack of slices, or coronal plane, and another laid out in repose and transversely sectioned.
Fans of special effects or forensic procedural series should add to Bodies to their Vegas itineraries for the visuals, but trivia fans will find an unexpected treasure trove of interesting facts to absorb. There are 100 miles of blood vessels filtering the fluid of life inside kidneys, for example. The central part of the thoracic cavity is called the mediastinum. The mitral valve controls the flow of blood between the heart’s left atrium and left ventricle. People are born with innate preferences for sweet or salty.
Learn how the heart works. Find out what the four major divisions of the brain and the four types of post-traumatic stress disorder are. See a healthy vertebral column next to one afflicted with scoliosis. The presenters of Bodies bill the attraction as a visual textbook, a descendant of dissection practices with precedents among Renaissance artists and ancient scientists. It’s more of a three-dimensional textbook that makes learning about anatomy practically effortless.
There is a room featuring stages of embryonic development with an advanced warning sign and a detour for patrons who would prefer to bypass it and move on to a gallery dedicated to prosthetics. Designer Sophie de Oliveira Barata of The Alternative Limb Project provided several of her blinged-out futuristic limbs for an installation on display throughout the summer, with video of models and their reimagined prosthetics supplementing the examples.
A better understanding of prosthetics caps an educational experience that doesn’t stay in Las Vegas. Remembering the lessons of Bodies doesn’t take additional study. The flow of the exhibit and its striking visual elements make it easy to store and recall anatomical knowledge long after a visit.
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