Dissections are interesting if kind of gross.

July 22, 2003 12:27 PM

Dissection videos. Dartmouth: Human Anatomy. University of Wisconsin Medical School: Human Anatomy. TissueLink: Liver. University of Michigan: Peritoneum. Palo Alto School District: Sheep's Heart. University of Alberta: Cat; Squalus. American Museum of Natural History: Dogfish Shark. University of Virginia: Frog. Scott Middle School, Fort Knox, Kentucky: Frog; Worm (On the first frog dissection video the teacher tells the students, "He's dead, he won't complain. I promise he won't sue."). University of Kentucky: Esophageal Hiatus. ThinkQuest: Starfish. Carolina Biological Supply: Owl Pellets. Science Man: Television Set. Greg Frederickson: Twist-hinged dissection of an equilateral triangle to a square. More geometric dissections: Geometric dissections on the web.
posted by Mo Nickels (10 comments total)

Or the grotesque sight of a Furby Autopsy!!!!
posted by dirtylittlemonkey at 12:35 PM on July 22, 2003

Hot Pocket Dissection.
posted by Vidiot at 12:48 PM on July 22, 2003

If you're interested in autopsy videos, check out Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (the etymological meaning of Greek autopsia), a half-hour film shot in a Pittsburgh morgue. Even Brakhage had a hard time shooting it, and it's rough going for the viewer (I had to turn away my eyes more than once), but highly educational. From a review by Jeffery Heilman (warning: link leads to gory pictures alongside review!):

Offering what is probably the longest uncomfortable silence in the history of cinema, Stan Brakhage’s documentary short The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes is a harrowing, unshakable, but fundamentally fascinating, viewing experience. Set entirely in a Pittsburgh morgue, the film records three actual autopsies with an unflinching eye. In its willingness to stare death and our inescapably corporeal state in the face it practically begs the viewer to have an extreme reaction... Because Act of Seeing is entirely silent and because Brakhage’s roving camera does more than passively observe the flaying of peoples’ bodies, it feels more immediate than any such film I’ve seen before. He zooms his lens in to get uncomfortably close to his subjects, turning flesh into an abstraction. In doing so prompts the audience both to see the beauty there that we might otherwise neglect and confront the fears that we’re able to avoid due to lack of proximity to awareness of internal selves.

The film is available on the new Criterion DVD By Brakhage: An Anthology, which is one of the best things they've put out.
posted by languagehat at 12:50 PM on July 22, 2003

From the San Francisco Exploratorium: a cow eye dissection, a sheep brain dissection, and a baseball dissection.
posted by Dunvegan at 12:57 PM on July 22, 2003

Mmm... this makes me want pizza.

(I love the Internet. I type "x-files autopsy pizza" into Google, and there it is.)
posted by Tin Man at 1:49 PM on July 22, 2003

Whoa. Did you realize that people are made of meat? I mean just meat, like any old meat, like meat you'd eat if you're a meat eater. The arm dissected in the first link looks like a turkey leg on Thanksgiving.
posted by lumpley at 2:27 PM on July 22, 2003

visible barbie.
posted by quonsar at 3:34 PM on July 22, 2003

This is some weak shit. Now, when the Ptolemies authorized vivisection of condemned prisoners for the advancement of medical knowledge, that was something.
posted by Zurishaddai at 9:52 PM on July 22, 2003

Awesome, I love this stuff. :)
Test your skill with the Virtual Autopsy.
posted by plep at 12:06 AM on July 23, 2003

languagehat, you're right, the Brakhage dvds have been rocking my world.
But you know, after years of watching Stan Brakhage's films, and after having taken several of his classes at CU Boulder, I have still been unable to sit through "The Act of Seeing With One's Own Eyes." The silence seems to make it so, so very much worse.
posted by ghastlyfop at 5:41 AM on July 23, 2003