The Milwaukee Public Museum’s new exhibit, a display of the traveling Body Worlds show, will be open to the public until June 1. There have been few sights that have amazed and impressed me more than this exhibit: standing face to face with a real corpse is a chilling and breathtaking look at modern day science.

Body Worlds, a presentation formulated by German anatomist Guther von Hagens, travels around the world showing preserved human corpses posed in a variety of positions to illustrate a range of information on the human body’s systems. Hagen’s method of plastination involves preserving either the entire body or a specific system, allowing exhibits featuring the entire body, the muscular system, nervous system, and the network of blood vessels.

The first presentation room includes bodies playing chess, basketball, performing Tai Chi, and even one riding a horse, complete with a the full body of the horse. It takes a while for the fact that you are observing actual bodies of people who were alive at one point to sink in.

The very experience of seeing the breathtaking network of tissues, vessels, and cells that compose our bodies is worth ten times the price of admission. But Body Worlds is not simply a showcase of Hagen’s new technology in the world of anatomy. Body Worlds features numerous exhibits and information regarding smoking, eating fatty foods, and other unhealthy habits that far too many of us partake in. These areas maintain a sense of cohesion with the rest of the pieces and serve to inform without becoming overly preachy. It demonstrates very visually the horrible effects of tar and excess fat consumption, displaying cross-sections of obese bodies and blackened lungs and tissues.

One of the most incredible parts of Body Worlds was the displays featuring infected or diseased organs. Though the entire show focuses upon the anatomy of the body mainly through whole human specimens, individual organs can be seen in glass display tanks. A variety of tumors and other diseases are available for public viewing. The true and often horrifying effects disease wreaks on the body are shown as I had never seen before. The exhibition is truly an amazing presentation, fantastic for museum patrons who love science, the human body, or are simply interested in learning something new.