As a young lecturer at the University of Heidelberg in 1977, von Hagens developed a laboratory trick that at first seemed of interest only to a dwindling cadre of macroscopic anatomists: a way to impregnate slices of kidney tissue with plastic. Soon he’d made the process work for whole dissected bodies. He starts with regular embalming—the injection of formaldehyde into femoral arteries—and then submerges the body in acetone, which dissolves its fat and water. After that he drops the corpse into a basin filled with liquid polymer. It’s placed inside a vacuum chamber, where the acetone bubbles off as plastic pushes in to take its place.
It took years to get the details right, but eventually von Hagens figured out a way to turn his method into a morbid empire, devoted to the processing of animal and human cadavers, with outposts in Kyrgyzstan and China.
via Wired/more
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