Body Worlds
For the first 20 years, plastination was used to preserve small specimens for medical study. It was not until the early 1990s that the equipment was developed to make it possible to plastinate whole body specimens, each specimen taking up to 1,500-man-hours to prepare. The first exhibition of whole bodies was displayed in Japan in 1995. Over the next two years, von Hagens developed his first "Body Worlds" exhibition, showing whole bodies plastinated in lifelike poses and dissected to show various structures and systems of human anatomy, which has since met with public interest and controversy in more than 50 cities around the world. The exhibition, and von Hagens' subsequent exhibitions "Body Worlds 2, 3 and 4", have received more than 26 million visitors all over the world .