For medical students, anatomy is often introduced through a combination of textbooks, diagrams, models and cadaveric dissection. Each has its own value, but none completely solves one of anatomy education’s oldest problems: how do you preserve the human body in a form that can be studied again and again?
Cadavers provide an unmatched opportunity to appreciate anatomical relationships, variation and three-dimensional structure. However, conventional preservation comes with practical limitations. Specimens deteriorate, require special storage and are often difficult to transport or repeatedly handle.
Toward the end of the 20th century, German anatomist Gunther von Hagens took a novel approach to the longstanding challenge of preserving human anatomical specimens. His work ultimately led to the development of plastination, a technique that transformed the preservation and teaching of human anatomy.
Von Hagens, who died on July 24, 2026, aged 81, is best known to the public as the creator of BODY WORLDS. For anatomy educators, however, his more enduring contribution was the development of plastination in 1977, a technique that changed how biological specimens could be preserved, studied and taught.3
Plastination is a preservation technique in which water and soluble fats within biological tissues are replaced with curable polymers. Once the polymer is hardened, the resulting specimen becomes dry, durable and resistant to decomposition.1,2
The basic idea was strikingly different from traditional preservation.
Instead of keeping a specimen surrounded by preservative fluid, plastination replaces much of the material inside the tissue with a polymer.
The technique can be used for individual organs, anatomical sections and larger specimens, including whole-body preparations. Different polymers and processing methods can produce specimens with different degrees of flexibility, rigidity or transparency.
In 1975, von Hagens joined the Anatomical Institute of Heidelberg University as a scientific assistant. There he encountered anatomical specimens embedded in plastic blocks. Instead of simply accepting the existing method, he wondered whether the plastic could somehow be introduced into the specimen itself rather than merely surrounding it.(Anatomic Excellence 2026).
That question became the starting point for years of experimentation.
In 1977, von Hagens developed the plastination technique. According to the PLASTINARIUM's historical account, the first presentable plastinate was produced on January 10, 1977, and the process was subsequently submitted for patent protection.3
The significance of the invention was not immediately obvious to everyone. But the principle was powerful: if the fluids responsible for decomposition could be removed and replaced with a stable polymer, biological tissue could potentially be preserved for long-term anatomical study.
Although the finished specimen may look deceptively simple, producing a plastinate involves several carefully controlled stages.1,2
The first step is fixation.
The tissue is treated to stop decomposition and stabilize its anatomical structures. Fixation also prepares the specimen for the subsequent stages of plastination.
This is particularly important when the aim is to preserve fine anatomical relationships rather than simply retain the overall shape of an organ.
The next stage involves removing water from the specimen.
Acetone is commonly used as an intermediary solvent. During this stage, water within the tissues is gradually replaced by the solvent.
This is essential because the water must eventually be removed before the polymer can occupy the spaces within the specimen.
Forced impregnation is the central stage of plastination.
The dehydrated specimen is placed in a liquid polymer under vacuum conditions. As the solvent is removed, the polymer gradually moves into the spaces previously occupied by the solvent.
This effectively replaces the tissue's fluids with polymer. It is this stage that gives plastination its distinctive ability to preserve internal structures in a stable form.
The final stage is curing. The polymer is hardened using an appropriate curing method, producing the finished plastinate.
Depending on the technique and polymer selected, the final specimen may be relatively flexible, firm or transparent.
Anatomy is fundamentally three-dimensional. A textbook can show the brachial plexus from an idealized angle. A digital model can rotate it on a screen. A lecturer can explain its branches.
But a well-prepared human specimen can show the actual spatial relationships between nerves, vessels, muscles, fascia and surrounding structures. This is where plastinated specimens can complement traditional cadaveric teaching.
Because they are durable and relatively easy to handle, they can be examined repeatedly without the same maintenance requirements as wet specimens. They can also be transported and displayed in teaching environments where maintaining conventional anatomical preparations may be difficult.1,2
Von Hagens' work eventually brought human anatomy into museums and public exhibitions through BODY WORLDS.
The first BODY WORLDS exhibition opened in Japan in 1995. It presented plastinated human specimens to the general public and demonstrated that anatomical education could extend beyond medical classrooms and professional laboratories (Anatomic Excellence 2026).
The current Institute for Plastination account states that BODY WORLDS exhibitions have been viewed by more than 58 million people since their debut (Gubener Plastinate 2026).
People could observe organs, vessels, muscles and pathological changes using actual human specimens.
For von Hagens, this was part of a broader belief that knowledge of the human body should not remain restricted to medical professionals.3
The public display of human bodies was never going to be free of controversy. And that controversy is important to understand.
In their two-part analysis of von Hagens and BODY WORLDS, authors described the tension between scientific investigation, artistic presentation and religious or cultural ideas about the human body. They argued that von Hagens' work blurred boundaries that had traditionally separated anatomical science from art and other ways of interpreting the body.1,2
Some of the controversy arose because the plastinated bodies were not always presented as conventional anatomical specimens. They could be positioned running, playing chess, fencing or engaging in other recognizable activities.
The use of human remains for teaching requires a clear ethical framework. Von Hagens established a body donation programme for plastination and maintained that individuals should provide informed consent during their lifetime. The programme was later expanded to include consent for public exhibition, with measures intended to protect donor identity (Anatomic Excellence 2026).
The current von Hagens Plastination announcement also states that the human specimens used in BODY WORLDS come from people who chose during their lifetimes to donate their bodies for plastination, research and anatomical education.3
Plastination and dissection serve different educational purposes.
Cadaveric dissection allows students to actively explore tissues. They learn how to identify structures, separate tissue planes and appreciate anatomical variation. It also provides an experience of working directly with the human body.
A plastinate, by contrast, provides a stable preparation that can be examined repeatedly.
One approach is dynamic and exploratory. The other is durable and demonstrative. Used together, they can complement each other.
A student might dissect a region during a practical session and later use a plastinated specimen to revisit the same relationships from a different perspective.
This makes plastination particularly valuable as an adjunct to cadaver-based anatomy teaching, rather than a replacement for it.
Gunther von Hagens died on July 24, 2026, but the technique he developed in 1977 continues to influence anatomical education worldwide.
The PLASTINARIUM in Guben continues to produce anatomical specimens for medical schools, universities and other educational institutions. The Institute for Plastination describes the ongoing use of plastinated specimens in medical and healthcare education.3
His most enduring contribution to anatomy may be the simple idea that human anatomy can be preserved in a form that allows us to keep studying it.
For generations of medical students, that means difficult anatomical relationships can be revisited long after a dissection has ended.
For educators, it means that carefully prepared human specimens can become durable teaching resources.
And for the public, it opened a window into a part of the human body that had traditionally remained hidden.
Plastination did not make the human body less remarkable. It made its complexity easier to see. And in anatomy, sometimes the most powerful teaching tool is simply being able to look again.
Moore, Charleen M., and C. Mackenzie Brown. “Gunther von Hagens and Body Worlds, Part 1: The Anatomist as Prosektor and Proplastiker.” The Anatomical Record Part B: The New Anatomist 276, no. 1 (2004): 8–14. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.b.20003.
Moore, Charleen M., and C. Mackenzie Brown. “Gunther von Hagens and Body Worlds, Part 2: The Anatomist as Priest and Prophet.” The Anatomical Record Part B: The New Anatomist 277, no. 1 (2004): 14–20. https://doi.org/10.1002/ar.b.20005.
PLASTINARIUM. “Gunther von Hagens.” Accessed August 10, 2026. PLASTINARIUM
Anatomic Excellence. “History of Plastination.” Accessed August 10, 2026. Anatomic Excellence
von Hagens Plastination. “Gunther von Hagens 1945–2026.” July 27, 2026. Gunther von Hagens 1945–2026