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How gross anatomy changes you forever

After a week of medical school orientation, followed by two weeks in the classroom studying cellular organelles and biochemical pathways, our class was finally going to start the centuries-old rite of passage that is human gross anatomy. For many students, it will be first time seeing a dead body. The anatomy lab is where future surgeons will make their first cut with a scalpel, without the pressure of life and death. It is where the ability to visualize organs and spatial relationships within a living body will be honed. It is also the place where medical students begin, for better and for worse, to become desensitized.

On the morning of the big day, professors lectured us, trying…

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Featured

 Dissecting cadavers: learning anatomy or a rite of passage?

In many medical schools, dissection of cadavers remains an essential component of the curriculum, even though surveys from the past 50 years have shown this is not the most efficient way of learning anatomy. Yet the persistence of dissections suggests a different role: a rite of passage and creating an esprit de corps for the profession.

 First-year medical students still rely on cadavers to learn anatomy

The six first-year med students approach the table, the place where for the next seven weeks they'll spend so much time, it will seep into their dreams. They brace themselves to meet him. Him, their cadaver.

Articles of Interest

Anatomy: Art and Science

The dissection of human cadavers for medical purposes has a long history. Herophilos and Erasistratos, Greek physicians working in Alexandria in the 200s BCE, seem to have been the first to systematically dissect human bodies. Dissecting humans was forbidden in the Roman Empire, so people such as Galen used the bodies of apes.

Cadaver Dissection in Anatomy: The Ethical Aspect

Cadaver being our First teacher and without its availability Medical Education would come to a standstill. Cadaveric dissection is an integral part of medical education and the basis of anatomy for first M.B.B.S. students. The dead human body has failed to elicit much theological interest, and until recently, little ethical interest.

Dissection debate: Why are medical schools cutting back on cadavers?

About half of Canada’s medical schools have already traded complete dissections for a combination of pre-cut body parts and new imaging technologies that offer a faster route to teaching basic anatomy.

Exquisite, Disturbing Objects From 500 Years of Human Anatomical Science

For centuries people have been simultaneously fascinated by what's inside the human body and squeamish about getting close enough to a cadaver to actually find out. "There's this tension between the desire to know, and what it takes to get that knowledge," said David Jones, a historian of science at Harvard Medical School and one of the curators of a new exhibit on the history of anatomy at Harvard's Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments.

Gross Anatomy Dissections

These videos were developed for the University of Wisconsin Gross Anatomy Dissection course.

Human Dissection – From Galen to the Great Revelations of Andreas Vesalius

The first of the great anatomists was Galen of Pergamon (AD 130-200) who made vast achievements in the understanding of the heart, the nervous system, and the mechanics of breathing. Because human dissection was forbidden, he performed many of his dissections on Barbary apes, which he considered similar enough to the human form.

Jack Choi: On the virtual dissection table

Jack Choi demonstrates a powerful tool for training medical students: a stretcher-sized multi-touch screen of the human body that lets you explore, dissect and understand the body's parts and systems.

Learning Empathy From the Dead

The first-year dissection is often an experience that teaches medical students to emotionally detach from their patients. By forcing future doctors to learn about the lives of their cadavers, some medical schools are trying to reverse the effect.

Making dissections of cadavers public helps us embrace life, as well as death

There is nothing salacious about wanting to witness the intricacies of the human body: we all have one. There is also nothing particularly morbid about considering death and contemplating decay.

The Anatomage Table

The Anatomage Table (formerly known as the Virtual Dissection Table), developed by Anatomage in collaboration with Stanford University's Division of Clinical Anatomy, is a breakthrough in visualizing human anatomy.

What Is It Like for a Medical Student to Cut Open a Body for the First Time?

I have to admit that the more I understood Fred as a human being—the more his story was unfolding before my eyes—the harder it became for me to maintain detachment during dissection. I began to believe that a tragedy—possibly even an injustice—had taken place to Fred. A great sorrow came over me.

Resources

Anatomage

The Anatomage Table is the most technologically advanced anatomy visualization system for anatomy education and is being adopted by many of the world’s leading medical schools and institutions.

Dissection Techniques

With proper dissection techniques, not only will you save time, you also will be able to better find, isolate and mobilize structures. The following video will show you several different techniques to help you accomplish your dissection objectives.