The Health Technology Department visited the world-famous exhibit, “The Body Revealed” at the Harford Civic Center.

 The exhibit complements the curriculum  by being designed to look deep inside the entire structure of the human body. The bodies are real and in natural poses. Revolutionary technology enabled the exhibit to show in complete detail the muscular, skeletal, nervous, digestive, respiratory, circulatory, reproductive, urinary and integumentary (skin, the body’s largest organ), systems.

 This is the only opportunity for students to see the human body so completely and realistically. Their instructors, Ms. Sirko and Ms. Fuller explained details of the exhibit as the students went through it. Ms. Van Eick, Art instructor and a former medical illustrator, was also part of the group enabling a further perspective on what was shown. In particular, one of the human models was arranged in such a way as to show the origin and insertion of muscles. This is normally not part of a high school curriculum and it enabled the instructors to introduce that concept in a meaningful way. 

There were two parts of the exhibit that impressed the students the most. One was samples of a healthy human lung versus a diseased lung, caused by smoking tobacco. On the wall behind the specimens was written in large letters, “Every pack of cigarettes you smoke makes you live three hours and forty minutes less. We want you around longer, stop smoking” Next to the lung samples was a large plexiglass bin with cigarette packs that people tossed away. The other section of the exhibit that completely fascinated the students were the real samples of fetuses in all major stages of development. 

This was truly an incredible once-in-a-lifetime learning experience. We were all lucky to be a part of it.