Drawer Man is aptly named.
In dissecting his body, anatomists pulled out muscles and organs like so many open drawers. They also peeled back parts of the body to display other organs, creating an open-door effect.
Drawer Man is one of 25 specially preserved cadavers among more than 200 human specimens that go on public display today when the Denver Museum of Nature & Science opens “Body Worlds 2.”
The exhibit is the brainchild of Dr. Gunther von Hagens, a German physician and anatomist who in 1977 invented a preservation method he calls “plastination.” It removes water from human tissue and replaces it with fluid plastic that hardens.
“Any layperson should have access to the beauty beneath the skin and the (enormous) complexity below the skin,” von Hagens said Thursday at a news conference.
“Body Worlds 2” continues a series of exhibits that have drawn more than 18 million people around the world since 1997.
For several years, the exhibits created a whirlwind of criticism in every city they visited. But the heat came mostly from the media, not the people who visit the exhibits, von Hagens said.
Another storm swept over the first “Body Worlds” after reports that von Hagens had used cadavers of executed Chinese prisoners rather than just donated bodies.
Von Hagens said that those claims were disproved long ago and that he was being tarred by copycat exhibitors using prisoner cadavers.
“There are no Chinese bodies in this exhibit,” he said.
Those controversies seem to be behind him now after detailed investigations by a California museum cleared his methods.
Julia Taylor, spokeswoman for the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, said only seven protest letters have been received, while more than 54,000 advance tickets have been sold.
Once inside the exhibit, it’s easy to see why the show is a hit.
One display, Muscleman, gives two views of the same cadaver: the muscular and skeletal systems. It looks something like an old cartoon gag, where an animal speeds away so fast it leaves behind its skeleton.
The muscular part of Muscleman displays the man’s face and the outer portion of his hands, including fingernails. The skeletal part, including teeth, blue eyes and finger bones, stands apart.
Cadavers are displayed as if they were caught in the middle of action – dancing, diving, skateboarding, ski jumping, throwing a javelin or swinging a baseball bat. The muscles, bones and organs look as they would in a live person performing the same act.
While the cadavers are the most eye-catching aspect of the exhibit, the smaller specimens are just as interesting. There are displays of individual parts, such as the tiny bones inside the ear canal that allow humans to hear.
A timely specimen shows a part of a brain damaged by a massive stroke similar to the one that killed Baseball Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett on Monday.
Von Hagens and museum president George Sparks stressed that a major aim of the exhibit is to let people see how lifestyle choices can harm the body. That is vividly shown by the side-by-side presentation of a healthy lung and one darkened and damaged by smoking. Such a display, they hope, will get people to make healthier decisions.
The exhibit runs through July 23.
Staff writer Ed Will can be reached at 303-820-1694 or ewill@denverpost.com.
