A short history of the preservation of human corpses: from formaldehyde to plastination

Abstract

Anatomists have tried to reconcile the contradictory requirements of authencity and didactical value in the teaching of medical knowledge. In this way, body models, shaped and sculpted to show distinct parts or features, have been produced since the early Renaissance, to serve as teaching aids in medical schools. But the models do not give students a feel for organic texture. Therefore, anatomists have combined a preference for corpses with the educational advantages of body models. This preference has been achieved with serveral chemical substances which have preserved the corpses to be studied, i. e. formaldehyde and other ones. But from 1977, when Van Hagen devised plastination, a moral problem has arisen: the exhibition of the plastinated dead human bodies which only stimulates the popular curiosity