Body still as glorious a mystery as it ever was

ATHLETICS:The Human Body Exhibition shows us in all our gory glory, so we can appreciate the body truly is a temple, writes IAN O'RIORDAN

WHEN HE ran in the woods in the cold morning light was he fully clothed, in several dry-fit layers, laced up in cushioned footwear?

Did his biceps femoris ever wrench, his semitendinosus once tear, and if so was he aware that stretching would do yet more damage?

Was that burly calcaneus ever torn from the long plantar ligament, cursing him with fasciitis?

Did those loose phalanges ever dislocate, or were those ungues ever bleached of keratin, and slip off like a loose glove?

Was his Achilles’ heel striking piercing and crippling pain, or ever ruptured, ending all hopes he’d run with all his natural swiftness once again?

Oh God, if only Thetis had been more careful in protecting her son’s immortality.

When he crouched down into that most classical of Greek poses, the unmistakable ancient Olympian, was he as naked then, as concentrated, visualising the height and distance of the implement he temporarily adorned?

Did he know the discus could be traced back to 776 BC and yet remain the only event where a world record has never been set during the Olympics?

Were his vertebrae ever buckled, his arches ever collapsed, and was he ever tempted by the extra distances promised by stanozolol?

Did he still feel that modern titanium cemented to his bone, or did he live long enough to earn the measures osteoporosis and osteoarthritis?

Was he once struck down by the strength of his own will?

When he raised and stretched himself for that football, how was his cerebellum coping, or was he suspended, as he is now, between two worlds?

Was that a look of fear, of desire, or determination in this dark purple light?

Did he ever strain his adductor longus, reduced to watching all sport from the couch?

Or worse still did he ever tear those preciously thin cruciate ligaments that criss-cross the meniscus, right where the femur is introduced to the tibia by the patella, and if so who performed the surgery?

Fear not for my own sanity – for these are merely some of the questions posed by The Human Body Exhibition, currently on display at Dublin’s Ambassador Theatre. There are other questions posed too, including the deeply ethical one, and this exhibition is probably not for everyone; yet for others, particularly those keen on the citius, altius, fortius potential of our athletic ability, it should not to be missed.

Here we are distanced only by death, and Vesalius would have unquestionably approved – and so too da Vinci.

What fascinated him at the height of the Renaissance still fascinates us, 500 years on, but no, most vision and appreciation of our internal architecture is still denied us, from the cradle to the grave, a great geography still as hidden from us as the deepest underworld.

How many of us have seen even one artery, one vein? Why not look upon our own succulent hearts, and live? Why does it feel like such a defiant act, a violation of some primordial taboo, to go trespassing on the human right of way?

Only when we see the spinal chord ripped open for us, the insane layers of brain membrane, the cold heart, the spacious abdominal cavity and sinuous coils of the intestine, our own isotonic distillery of kidneys, urethras and bladder, our arched diaphragm and empty lungs, all stripped back in their gory glory, can we appreciate that our bodies truly are temples, and why we must treat then as such.

There is some debate about the exact motivations of The Human Body Exhibition, and indeed the exact location of these medical university donation programmes, but only in reality can Homo erectus be as unflinching and unsettling, as emotionally shattering, and as thrilling and mesmerising.

What takes centre stage – at least for anyone who has ever exercised to exhaustion – is the bodies exhibited in motion, and specifically running, discus-throwing, and diving for a football.

Even if the tissues are framed by the process of plastination, the last electrical impulses forever hushed, they are still turgid with nourishment and robotic cleverness, and none more so than the runner.

He is the poster boy, his right leg striding out, the timbered femur all hung and strapped with beefy strips, his left arm punched forward, white tendons bowed across the joints.

He is still gleaming pink, like fresh smoked salmon, but in a grimly cruel and brilliant twist, his muscles pulled back, flayed away, skewered, like a rushed autopsy left abandoned, revealing the incredible range of human motion.

Did his heart grow to twice the size of a normal man, inflated and toughened by the lonely miles of the distance runner? Was that pelvis, once capable of the moment of deepest penetration, ever fractured by stress? Was that right tibia ever splintered with pain, an unbearable tightness between muscle and bone?

Is that still sweat on his eyebrows, the final remnants of oxyhaemoglobin on his face? What else was he harbouring under the yellow layers of adipose tissue, the thin red lines of nerve endings, the long straps of chorded tendons, and thin upholstery over muscle and bone?

So much human sickness and disease is concealed by our fleshy skin and hairy heads – and so too are running injuries. What if we had to wear our lungs on our sleeve, same as our hearts? What if we could see the tightness along our iliotibial band, same as the tiredness under our eyes? We must often rely on instinct, or a costly visit to the medical professionals, when a little more appreciation might carry us through.

No wonder we are left with so many different time bombs constantly ticking at alternating paces. No wonder we forget that our bones, all 208 of them, our blood factories, our own secret suppliers of our EPO, must be let rest, for the calcium to flow, to maintain their master of construction, tooled and tightened and aligned. No wonder so much cartilage, our mother of bone, is irreparably grafted, and no wonder those fibrous sheets encasing our muscle, like strings of red liquorice, merely cling-filmed, are so easily torn.

No wonder our heart – rhapsodised by romantic poets, massacred by cheap singer-songwriters – is rhythmically disturbed, not by lust but by the gluttony and greed of repetitive stress.

No wonder our liver, hidden like a dark sun, is so easily knobbed and scarred when we drink champagne like Churchill, to reward our victory, and comfort our defeat.

No wonder our stomach, hung from the oesophagus in stalled peristalsis, already moist and steamy and rank, is made so noxious when we wrestle it with coffee and milk. No wonder our three million sweat glands often fail to cope, even though only vacant on the one body part you think would require it most.

Most of all no wonder we are so struck with dumbness when faced with the unlimited capacity of our own brain, once it is separated for us, as if fearing its own intelligence, its unrealised thoughts, and how many decades of memories and wishes and regrets will some day be lost in there.

No one should regret exploring the human body. As Emerson said, realising the poet is the only true doctor, we are all dying, none more slowly or faster than the other. So run, jump, hurdle, as if our lives depend on it.