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My enthusiasm for anatomy started already in early childhood.
I received a nearly deadly injury at my temple. I was rushed to hospital,
and I heard the doctor say this boy will probably die.
When I wake up again and I really experienced a new life.
The doctor was listening to my chest and they were examining me.
So I got a feeling that as a youngster that the body must be something very precious.
I must be very interesting, and ever since then I've wanted to become a medical doctor.
I sneaked into an autopsy at 17, I was 16 when I dropped out of school to become a male nurse.
My life always was, already from the beginning on the anatomy track.
Already as a youngster I had a love affair with the Red Cross as a life saver.
These Plastinates, this body world, I believe I changed the way we see ourselves.
We die a double death. We die the death of our soul, and we die a body death.
My work has a double aim. On the one side I like to increase health consciousness,
by comparing healthy and diseased organs, like a smoker's lung and normal lung, alcoholic liver and normal liver.
On the other hand, I also want to bring forward the fact that we are mortals.
The body is very strong. We can sustain a lot of pressure, but only for a short time.
But we have a fragile nature, which you have to honour by living a healthy and very careful life.
My professional dissemination and the aims of the British Red Cross are actually going the same avenue.
We both want to increase health consciousness. We want to give the people a chance to live healthier.
To understand more about their body,
and when it comes to an emergency to be able to act on the spot, professionally.
The British Red Cross makes a perfect job, by talking to the people, by brochures, leaflets, by lectures.
Teaching the people how important a healthy life is.
I mean the heart of yours, by showing what was up to now, only possible to see behind closed doors for the professionals.
And this, what I call democratisation anatomy, this opens the heart of the people,
They know what I show is authentic. And they are ready to join in.
When I started as a male nurse, I experienced quite a number of doctors unable to act in an emergency properly.
I didn't want this to happen to me. Therefore, after finishing medical school,
for the first year, I went to anaesthesia and emergency medicine, to be really at the scene capable.
And this way, it changed the way I look at emergency. I feel competent whatever happens.
My suggestion is not only for the lay people, but the doctors, start off your career,
with some months in emergency medicine.
Most emergencies happen without the presence of a doctor.
Therefore it is so important, that everybody, every citizen should have basic abilities to save life,
by knowing exactly what to do when an emergency happens, of course at his level of knowledge.
Thousands of lives in Great Britain could be saved in this way.
It's therefore, for me a privilege to help the British Red Cross
in its efforts to professionalise the people in emergency medicine.