Chicago, Illinois: Sliced Human Bodies, Cow Eyeball Dissection

Half-inch-thick cross-sections of a man and woman hang in transparent panes, like deli slices of Olive Loaf. It's education, Chicago style!

Museum of Science and Industry

Address:: 57th St., Chicago, IL
Directions:: Museum of Science and Industry. 57th St. and Lake Shore Dr.
Phone:: 312-684-1414
Admission:: Adults $18.
RA Rates:: Worth a Detour

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Visitor Tips and News About Sliced Human Bodies, Cow Eyeball Dissection

Reports and tips from RoadsideAmerica.com visitors and Roadside America mobile tipsters. Some tips may not be verified. Submit your own tip.

Slice.

Sliced Human Bodies

The body slices are back on permanent display as part of the "You! The Experience" exhibit. There is now a whole collection of gruesome sliced human body parts to go with it. The walk-through heart has been replaced by a giant pulsating 3-D heart sticking out of the wall.

[Jacob Krejci, 01/13/2015]

1/2" Man and Woman Body Slices - No Longer Displayed

Sadly the body slices are no longer on display. They were the one thing my brother really wanted to see on his latest trip home and we combed the museum looking for them. We finally asked at information and they confirmed they were taken off exhibit around the time of the Body Worlds traveling exhibit. Too much cadaver competition, I guess.

[Katy Spindler, 03/17/2012]

Walk Through Heart - Retired

The walk through heart is no longer in the museum (darn, my daughter was really looking forward to it!). It has been replaced by an enormous beating heart that beats in time to your heartbeat. Cool, but the whole "being inside the heart" thing is no more. Body slices are still there.

Be sure to check out the Cow Eyeball dissection (kids 10 and over can do it THEMSELVES!) if you're at the museum...happens three times a day in the education lab on the 3rd floor. Highlight of our visit!

[Robin Einzig, 08/18/2010]

1/2 inch body slices of a woman.

1/2" Man and Woman Body Slices

This display used to give me nightmares as a kid. It is an exhibit containing actual horizontal sections from a man's body and vertical sections from a woman's body. The bodies were frozen, cut into 1/2 inch sections with a power saw and preserved between sheets of glass. They are on display at the Museum of Science of Industry in Chicago, Illinois. I took my three junior-high age kids to this museum last summer to show them where I used to take my school field trips when I was their age. They refused to look at this particular diplay for any length of time. Can't blame them. It's not something you want to scrutinize right before lunch.

[Yolanda Hallin, 01/12/2003]

The 1/2" man and woman are old favorites of ours -- they contributed vital slivers to the Body Eclectic grotesque in the New Roadside America. Both bodies were sliced in the 1940s at an Indiana medical school. man is sliced horizontally (ear to ear) and the woman is sliced vertically (head to toe). About sixteen slices are on display in fixed well-lit glass panels, which can be observed from either side. You can no longer flip through them like a book, and last time we visited they we exhibited on the landing of a stairwell, not prime museum space....