The door goes to the locker rooms where the students change into their scrubs. There are rows of dissection tables in the lab and next to them, stained anatomy books and carts with scalpels and stained anatomy books. Eighty-eight medical students crowd around the body of an elderly woman. It is as hard as a stone. Montag explains that after a cancerous tumor had killed the uterine tissue, it calcified.
The students whisper. Gross anatomy—which deals with structures visible to the naked eye—is daunting. This class runs five days a week, beginning with lectures and ending with three hours in the lab. The students memorize thousands of terms, take 19 exams, and read a page textbook. Matt Present points to the whiteboard, where the 12 cranial nerves are drawn in blue and red with a Sharpie, labeled by a roman numeral and a letter: S, for afferent sensory nerves, which send signals to the brain; M, for efferent motor nerves, which carry messages from the brain; and B, for nerves that do both.
The students huddle over a body in groups of four, each taking a quadrant. The teaching assistants roam the lab, stopping to ask students for the function and definition of a bone or muscle.
Others squint at grainy CT images, trying to discern one organ slice from another. He holds a plastic skull in his hand, quizzing another student, Lauren Glick, for an osteology exam. The skullcap of the cadaver they stand next to was removed, its brain in a container on the floor. Two thick and purple optic nerves snake crossed over the pea-size pituitary gland, a sort of control center for the endocrine system that rests beneath the brain.
The gland is the combustion engine of thought and feeling, and the students are technicians studying a beautiful machine. Glick explains that if a tumor grows on the pituitary gland, it presses against the two nerves, causing headaches and tunnel vision.
Same as the woman with a hardened uterus, the students think of their cadaver in terms of a living person. Dissection is costly and time-consuming. At most medical schools, gross anatomy courses last hours, three times the length of most first-year courses. To comply with U. Occupational Safety and Health Administration guidelines for formaldehyde levels, which are as low as two parts per million, schools install expensive ventilation systems.
Over the past 30 years, tech companies have attempted to replace the cadaver. Those experiences can be had. Lanphear has been an administrator at medical schools around the world, from Texas to Ontario to Dubai. At his schools, students learn anatomy by looking at prosections, dissections done by skilled anatomists.
That way, an entire class can learn with only one body, studying one organ system at a time. Ross scoffs when asked if prosections can stand in for dissection. In anatomy, students learn to work in groups like doctors do.
Another cadaver had a tumor that had spread from the mouth up through the eye and into the brain. What was it like? Putting your hands inside them and taking them apart.
At Harvard, students begin with virtual anatomy, but that learning is only a prelude to the lab. They put their first IV in a cadaver, a patient who will not hurt. They practice appendectomies—procedures done , times each year in the U. Then surgical residents are sent back to the lab to study the anatomy again.
At the end of the class, students present their cadavers to a pathologist. Unlike in an anatomical drawing, the insides are not color-coded. They are messy and monochrome. The brachial plexus runs all the way down the arm and dives into the muscles in small branches. Fishman raises it like a grass root from the ground. Without the brachial plexus, movement and feeling in the arms and hands would be impossible. If you fall asleep with your arm hanging over a chair, the nerve gets compressed against the humerus, and it can die.
Prof Black says patients will benefit from the more rapid adoption of new surgical products and methods. Until it was illegal in the UK to practise surgery on cadavers. This meant that surgeons had to practise their skills on synthetic models or the carcasses of animals such as cats, dogs, rabbits and pigs.
Frozen body parts were also used, but they carry a high risk of infection and disintegrate in a day or two. Prior to , cadavers could be used for dissection but not practising surgery, out of respect for the deceased.
Using animals is never ideal as their anatomy is not always a good match for the human body. Similarly, bodies preserved using formaldehyde, a toxic solution, are never as good as the real thing. You just touch it lightly with the scalpel and it falls apart. She says that the bodies lack colour and the layers of tissue stick together making it "difficult to decide if [it] is a nerve, an artery or a vein. Typically, a break is needed every 20 minutes to escape the fumes.
The ones from the Austrian institute which pioneered the technique are far superior, she says. It is close to reality. You have the opportunity to understand the body much better; that helps you do surgery much better. Surgery is all about practice. It has a characteristic sweet acrid, disinfectant, odor that you most likely detect when you enter anatomy class. The permissible exposure limit PEL for phenol is 5 parts per million ppm. It is used in embalming solutions at Contact with this chemical can result in irritation to the skin, eyes, and upper respiratory system.
It has a characteristic pungent odor. The PEL is ppm. It is used in the embalming solution at This chemical is an irritant to the eyes, skin, and respiratory system. It is a colorless, odorless liquid. The chemicals are mixed with water at a ratio of one part embalming fluid to one parts water.
The SDS is an informational sheet that contains more in-depth information about the chemicals used. Specifically, information about how to safely work with the chemicals and what symptoms to look for when dealing with possible exposure.
Much like chemicals, you can be exposed to infectious agents by inhalation, ingestion, injection or absorption. Human tissues may contain infectious agents; however, the embalming solutions used on the cadavers not only preserve the tissue but also destroy many infectious agents. In addition, the cadavers are screened and therefore are of low risk. Appl Microbiol — J Urol — Expanding encyclopedia of mortuary practice, no. Disinfection of medical equipment.
The medical letter on drug and therapeutic information, April 7, Snyder R, Cheatle E Alkaline glutaraldehyde — an effective disinfectant. Am J Hosp Pharm — Ross P A new disinfectant. J Chem Pathol — Meltzer N, Henkin H Glutaraldehyde: a new preservative for cosmetics. Eigen E Dentrifrice compositions containing glutaraldehyde. Bellinger H Novel disinfectant and dry cleaning compositions. US Patent 3, , , to Bohme Fettchemic.
Blough H Selective inactivation of biological activity of myxoviruses by glutaraldehyde. J Bacteriol Suringa DW Treatment of superficial onychomycosis with topically applied glutaraldehyde. Arch Dermatol — Rendon L Embalming composition. Union Carbide Technical Bulletin. Pepper R, Chandler V Sporicidal activity of alkaline alcoholic saturated dialdehyde solutions. Metzger W Glutaraldehyde for the disinfection of clinical thermometers.
Lab Pract — Fried MG jr: Activated glutaraldehyde — a cold chemical sterilant.
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