[HN Gopher] What it's like to dissect a cadaver
___________________________________________________________________
What it's like to dissect a cadaver
Author : yuppiemephisto
Score : 183 points
Date : 2022-11-10 18:35 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (alok.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (alok.github.io)
| petya0812 wrote:
| at_a_remove wrote:
| This wasn't full on dissection but ... my father was dating a
| coroner, who _really_ wanted me to go to med school. However, my
| father was also ridiculously squeamish, to the point where even a
| few drops of blood could result in a faint. So, she decided to
| take me to an autopsy she had to sign off on, to see if I was
| also as delicate. My father refused to even enter the building,
| but there I am, with my first cadaver, which was a suicide.
|
| Local laws dictated that _all_ bullet fragments be removed, and
| since it was a low-caliber bullet the man had fired into his
| head, it mostly bounced around in there. Originally, they had
| drilled a discreet hole and were trying to get everything out
| that way, but eventually had to do the full rectangle, with a
| Stryker autopsy saw.
|
| Suffice to say that I do not have my father's squeamishness.
| cloverich wrote:
| Random side note but feinting at the sight of blood isn't
| necessarily a squeamish thing. I remember when we were learning
| to place IV's and the med student a row over from me warned he
| would feint. The nurses teaching us tried to re-assure him but
| he interrupted -- "Oh I'm not squeamish or scared or anything,
| its just a reaction to blood specifically".
|
| (TY for sharing your story btw, thought the aside was
| interesting enough to tangent on)
| at_a_remove wrote:
| Oh, his squeamishness was legendary. Despised horror films or
| too-graphic war movies. I saw him stop in his tracks, stagger
| back, and turn white upon seeing a fake dead rat from a Tom
| Sawyer costume. (And guess who had to bury the family pets?)
| rolisz wrote:
| Any advice on how to get over that reaction to blood?
| taskforcegemini wrote:
| maybe watching the show "dexter" can help? I am weak to
| some blood stuff, I fainted once just talking about it.
| However, donating blood or watching dexter was ok.
| argentinian wrote:
| Contract some muscle, for example close and contract your
| hand. That would cause the blood to flow there and increase
| blood pressure preventing fainting.
|
| Blood phobia psychological treatments developed by
| behaviourists give that indication to patients during the
| exposure to blood and blood related experiences during the
| treatment. The name of the therapy is exposure therapy and
| it's the one with more evidence supporting it for treating
| phobias. Yes, its about "facing your fears" but it's done
| in a gradual way. https://www.apa.org/ptsd-
| guideline/patients-and-families/exp... Therapists found
| ways to prevent the fainting during the blood-phobia
| treatment, allowing the graded exposure occur.
| Nux wrote:
| Some sort of training I guess. Start with very little
| exposure then increase quantities.
|
| From what I understand the cause is an automatic response
| to lower the blood pressure, so as to limit the blood loss.
| LanceJones wrote:
| Perhaps the brain of the "fainter" is mistakenly
| interpreting the blood as its own (that of its own body)?
| OJFord wrote:
| Phlebotomist insisted I look away while she took my blood for
| testing, I'm pretty certain I would be fine, but I suppose
| one can't really know short of experience, and she's had
| enough people gain a bad experience not to want to let anyone
| gain any!
|
| Surely a med student _needs_ to overcome that though? Even
| going into say.. radiology, it seems bound to happen from
| time to time, isn 't that just really inconvenient for
| everyone, embarrassing even for the doctor (by then) himself?
| rrauenza wrote:
| Did she explain why the law was that way? Is it for evidence /
| forensics in case the case is reopened?
| at_a_remove wrote:
| No, she did not. I gather it was a source of occasional
| irritation.
| syntaxing wrote:
| Did you end up going to med school?!
| petya0812 wrote:
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I've been in medical schools where there were corpses and
| students all over the large hall. My first thought was wow each
| of these people had dreams, personalities and a soul. They were
| somebody. It gave me some comfort that the students were taught
| to respect the bodies and treat them with dignity. I wonder if
| that's all medical school or only this one because it was
| catholic.
|
| It seems OP doesn't care about this?
|
| Anyway, that's when I realized I could never be in that
| profession. I would have to become cold to it and I probably
| couldn't.
| Lornedon wrote:
| > It seems OP doesn't care about this?
|
| Where in the post did you see a lack of dignity? To me, it
| didn't seem disrespectful.
| giardini wrote:
| A _soul_?! Reminds me of Queen 's "Fun It":
|
| > _" Hey, everybody, everybody gonna have a good time tonight
|
| Just shakin' the soles of your feet
|
| Everybody, everybody gonna have a good time tonight
|
| That's the only soul you'll ever meet..."_<
|
| https://www.letras.com/queen/86774/
| whatshisface wrote:
| A soul is just a word for an individual human consciousness.
| giardini wrote:
| Yeah, just as with aspirin, I carry a few of those
| (i.e.,"souls") in my pocket for emergencies, e.g., in case
| I need to fend off Satan (an archaic term for an individual
| evil entity of great power) - I toss a fee on the sidewalk
| and skedaddle away while He (i.e., the Devil [caps for
| classicly-attributed respect of his overweening spiritual
| powers]) devours them.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I think you're making a philosophical error akin to
| denying the existence of bread on the basis of not
| believing in transubstantiation. The word "soul" has a
| lot of unprovable beliefs attached to it in every world
| religion, but the word on its own refers to that which
| experiences in all the uses I'm aware of.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I tip my fedora to you kind gentlesir.
| petya0812 wrote:
| Haga wrote:
| petercooper wrote:
| If this sort of thing interests you and you're in the UK, there's
| a show in the next couple of weeks called _My Dead Body_ where a
| woman narrates her own dissection (through recordings and ML-
| based voice recreation):
| https://www.channel4.com/press/news/channel-4-announces-movi...
| .. apparently the woman was the first (identifiable) person in
| the UK to donate their body for "public display".
| est31 wrote:
| > If you exercise, we'll know. Their insides just look different.
|
| I've seen some video footage of minimally invasive operations
| (during a dies academicus lecture) and OMG fat was just so ugly.
| I know it is a natural part of us but when I saw that footage I
| promised myself to do more sports.
|
| Or IDK what they were referring to.
| loeg wrote:
| Probably muscle mass and connective tissue, too.
| genghisjahn wrote:
| Michael Crichton opens his book Travels with a pretty detailed
| description of dissecting the head of a cadaver.
| drtgh wrote:
| With all due respect to the profession, but.. how does this kind
| of thing arrived to the front page with 5 points? HN, come on,
| really?
| elvis70 wrote:
| It seems that the link was placed in the second-chance pool by
| a moderator: https://news.ycombinator.com/pool
|
| What's the second-chance pool:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308
| crazygringo wrote:
| A lot of articles pop onto the front page after just 5-7 votes.
| I think it has something to do with the upvoters not being
| correlated and the votes all coming quickly together.
|
| But then it needs more votes in a short window to stay. If it
| doesn't get them, it drops off as quickly as it came.
|
| So this seems to be HN working as usual.
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I've seen a fair number of posts arriving to the front page
| with ~5 points.
|
| One element could be the timing - if 5 points appear in the
| first, say, 15 minutes, it might be enough to raise it to the
| front page? Maybe there's an element of randomness, too. Dunno.
|
| I suppose HN algorithms are secret for a reason - if they were
| revealed, they could be optimized for.
| bombcar wrote:
| The HN algorithm picks posts from the new pool and puts them
| on the front page for a short time to see if it gets
| traction. This has been explained somewhere but I don't have
| the link.
| zmxz wrote:
| This sort of topic does not interest me, but I clicked, and to my
| surprise I gulped the article. This is one of the most
| interesting posts I've read on HN, ever. Awesome writeup, I love
| the POV of a non-expert in the field!
| incanus77 wrote:
| My late wife was a physical therapist and in undergrad she had a
| gross anatomy class with a cadaver dissection. After the chest
| cavity was opened, they were supposed to go over the internal
| organs step by step, but her group instead found a plastic bag
| inside containing all of the organs. Apparently the autopsy had
| involved inspecting, weighing, etc. the organs which made for a
| somewhat confusing discovery once the class got in there.
| robbiep wrote:
| If anyone wants to get their head around anatomy, beautifully
| prepared, find 'Ackland's Anatomy'. It's the visual bible.
| Beautifully prepared dissections from start to finish.
|
| It's also much cleaner than the particularly tedious process of
| dissecting a entire human being, most of which consists of slowly
| stripping back skin and fat to get to the interesting stuff
| (Source: with 2 others, slowly dismantled an entire adult human
| male from whole body down to each individual muscle and tendon
| over a period of 4 months)
| falcor84 wrote:
| On a related note, I would like to strongly recommend Jacob
| Geller's YouTube essay "What's the Point of Taking Apart a Body"
| [0]. It uses video games for the main examples, but goes quite
| deep in multiple directions in search of deeper meaning. I found
| it to be very poignant.
|
| [0] https://youtu.be/ohco3PB6eBw
| iends wrote:
| I got to experience a cadaver lab when my wife was taking a gross
| anatomy course. By the time I visited they were pretty deep into
| the semester, so the bodies were pretty well cut up.
|
| I only saw people being respectful the two times I was there,
| after hours with only students and no professors around.
|
| The smell was terrible, not because of rotting flesh, but because
| the chemicals. I had more opportunities to visit, but couldn't
| really get over the smell so would just wait in the hall for my
| wife.
|
| I'm optimistic that I don't experience that many dead bodies
| again until I am one.
| effnorwood wrote:
| zac_hudson wrote:
| Firstly, its surprising that this school allows what would
| apparently be the lay public gain access to human anatomical
| gifts. In Canada, this is restricted to persons with a legitimate
| interest, ie med students and grad students in
| bioengineering/bio-adjacent fields.
|
| I think that the author is not an individual with such an
| interest was quite clear from the tone taken on this piece - most
| discussions involving cadavers are quite respectful of the fact
| that they are working on the mortal remains of a person; for some
| reason the way this piece was written felt almost disrespectful.
| Sporktacular wrote:
| Exactly. I always understood you could allow your remains to be
| used for organ donation or for science. Not for some
| entertainment before Friday drinks. May be no worse than the
| way some med students treat donated bodies, but that doesn't
| make it any better.
| JusticeJuice wrote:
| Yeah, it's stuff like this that makes me not want to donate my
| body to science.
| [deleted]
| the_af wrote:
| I totally understand how you feel, but I think I disagree.
| After I'm dead, my body is of no use to me. I'm gone. Like
| Elvis, I will have "left the building". I'm not an ancient
| Egyptian and so I neither believe in the afterlife nor in my
| body being of use to me there. And bodies are definitely a
| boon to science and medicine; they help the living! What can
| be more uplifting than that?
|
| However, if the body of a loved one who has passed away were
| to be treated without respect, it would upset me a lot.
| cedricgle wrote:
| Well don't donate your body to France [1]. Some witness even
| alleged the medical team played football with people heads.
|
| [1] https://ca.movies.yahoo.com/french-academic-charged-over-
| mas...
| nibbleshifter wrote:
| My sister (a doctor) told us of a few rather unsavory
| incidents that happened with body parts during her time at
| medical school.
|
| Its pretty common tbh.
| minimal-o wrote:
| Yikes! I hope that was a corner, nee coroner, case, but it
| would not surprise me. My mother was a student nurse in the
| 40's. In the U.S. for context. She told me of corpses
| floating in a big tub, or vat, at uni, and that they had to
| take them out and dissect them for class. She didn't
| mention any peculiar schenanigans as you describe and I am
| glad she did not.
| giardini wrote:
| _shenanigans_ (no "c").
| Starwatcher2001 wrote:
| I'm on the list to donate my body. Perhaps a medical student
| will gain just a little more insight or skill by practicing a
| technique on my body, and perhaps that will help them save or
| help a patient or two in the future. I hope so.
|
| The thornier issue, having discussed my wishes with my
| family, is how it will affect them after I go.
| RockRobotRock wrote:
| Or maybe you'll be blown up by the us military :)
| coryfklein wrote:
| So interesting, because I had the opposite response. Sure if
| I donate my body to "science" and it's critical in some sort
| of medical discovery that would be great, but reading the OP
| and seeing the author's fascination, learning, and engagement
| with the cadaver I thought, "Gosh, what a gift!"
|
| I'd certainly be very happy knowing that my body brought such
| an experience to another individual, I certainly won't be
| using my body anymore at that point.
|
| I wonder if, when signing up for donation, you can specify
| what kinds of "science" or interactions you prefer your body
| to be used for after dying.
| martopix wrote:
| Many universities, at least in Europe, allow you to sign up to
| individual modules/exams. This is usually used by people who
| want to get ahead and study stuff before they actually sign up
| to a degree, but anyone can do it. At that point, the author
| would have been a student of that class like any other.
| danielheath wrote:
| > most discussions involving cadavers are quite respectful of
| the fact that they are working on the mortal remains of a
| person
|
| Not that I know first-hand, but that's not the impression I got
| from the med students when I was at uni.
|
| People find all sorts of odd ways to cope with their own
| mortality, and getting reminded of it tends to bring those to
| the fore.
| m-p-3 wrote:
| I participated in a dissection (ex med tech in the Canadian
| Forces) and the impression that I got is that the room was
| filled with respect, with everyone being careful to keep the
| dignity of the cadavers intact at all time.
| the_af wrote:
| My brother, when he attended his anatomy classes, told me the
| med students were very playful and joked all the time. A
| coping mechanism, perhaps? I think it's understandable, but
| respectful they were not.
|
| For example, they called one of the corpses "blondie"... and
| she was headless. Let that one sink in.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| Interesting that the stories about disrespectful behavior
| are always a friend of a friend and not the medical
| students themselves. I suspect a majority of these second
| hand stories of casual disrespect are a combination of a
| game of telephone and unreliable narrative bluster from
| young medical students confronting their own mortality for
| possibly the first time in their lives. Every story from
| someone with direct experience seems to be respectful.
| the_af wrote:
| No. This is first hand experience by my brother during
| anatomy classes. He was a student and one of the jokers,
| too. He said this behavior was pretty common, and he took
| part in it.
|
| Disrespectful/joking behavior _behind the scenes_ is not
| too rare with doctors, either. I have doctor friends who
| attest to this, as in, they engage in this behavior (so
| again, no game of telephone here). Never in front of the
| patient, since that would be rude and unacceptable, but
| privately with other physicians? You bet.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| You get that this is exactly the scenario I just
| described, right?
| the_af wrote:
| No, how? To _you_ maybe it is (as would ANY anecdote here
| not directly related by an anatomy student -- and maybe
| not even then, because what proof do you have that they
| are telling the truth?), but to me it 's not: I spoke
| with the student directly, and with the doctors in my
| second example; in both cases, the person I was talking
| to was directly engaged in the behavior. So not "a friend
| of a friend".
|
| You are justified in being skeptical, but unfortunately
| you're not going to find the evidence you seek on HN. By
| definition, the written word here is not going to be
| proof enough. If the topic interests you enough, I guess
| you'll have to speak to doctors and students directly?
| cloverich wrote:
| I went to medical school. I saw this firsthand many
| times. It's neither unexpected nor surprising. You are
| dissecting dead bodies, in a giant room full of dead
| bodies and you are there for months.
|
| EDIT: I realize I should clarify based on some of the
| sibling comments... nobody was doing anything obscene
| with body parts. I'm referring to commentary, jokes, dark
| humor.
| the_af wrote:
| > _nobody was doing anything obscene with body parts_
|
| Yes, same with my anecdotes. I was talking about dark
| humor, not doing anything obscene with body parts. I
| think nobody else mentioned anything obscene, either.
| davikr wrote:
| Respect to the cadaver was teached in our first dissection
| class and not even once any incident like that happened. On
| the other hand, I've seen a lot of disrespect coming from
| veterinary students, which brought me some disgust.
| sneak wrote:
| What other inanimate objects (that can't kill us easily,
| like an industrial press or firearm) do we talk about
| "respect" for?
|
| I think this is a special case of emotional transference.
|
| I don't personally see a reason to treat cadavers any
| differently than any other object in a lab. They're not
| people. Do we need to be careful to show respect for our
| mobile phones? How about our coffee mugs?
| kendallpark wrote:
| > I don't personally see a reason to treat cadavers any
| differently than any other object in a lab
|
| Even from a purely consequentialist point of view: if
| behavior around the cadavers gets out to the public, and
| the public deems it disrespectful, the public stops
| donating cadavers, which negatively impacts medical
| education. Even if you don't personally believe in
| treating human remains with respect, a huge part of
| society does, and you have to at least respect that.
| rubatuga wrote:
| First-hand, every session that involved cadavers during
| medical school was very respectful. We were told not to take
| photos as well. Worst part was the smell of formalin. Humour
| is fine, assuming the person/cadaver would have been okay
| with it (and quite a few of the older patients I've met joke
| about their mortality). But I would rather be respectful and
| play it safe.
| criddell wrote:
| Does very respectful mean no dark humor?
| mattkrause wrote:
| My experience was that boisterous shenanigans, like
| juggling testicles or something, would absolutely _not_
| have been tolerated. Indeed, the mood was somber
| /business-like enough that no one even dared. On the
| other hand, a whispered inoffensive remark to your lab
| partner would be okay. Something this like this would
| probably be okay:
|
| -- "Be careful not to nick the nerve as you <whatever>"
|
| -- "Opps! Better now?
|
| -- "Yes. In fairness, it's not her biggest problem right
| now"
| bookofjoe wrote:
| Yes -- the smell of the formalin!
|
| In 1970-71, my first year at UCLA med school, we spent four
| (4) hours 4 (four) days a week in the gross anatomy lab.
|
| First semester was below the neck, second semester just the
| head and neck.
|
| Fascinating; I enjoyed everything about dissecting our (4
| students/body) corpse.
|
| The only bad thing was the smell of the formalin: it was SO
| strong that my eyes would water every session: they/I never
| got used to it.
|
| My "Grant's Anatomy" textbook, which was propped up on the
| cadaver tank every session to guide me, still stunk of
| formalin 40+ years later, so much so that much as I enjoyed
| having it as a memory of something I did that was really
| hard, I threw it away around 2010 because it made every
| closet or cabinet or drawer I put it in reek.
|
| I suspect ventilation in the dissection room (120
| students/30 cadavers) 52 years ago was WAY worse than it is
| today.
|
| I'm surprised I'm not brain dead from inhaling superstrong
| formalin vapor 16 hours/week x 16 weeks/semester x 2
| semesters = for roughly 500 hours that year.
|
| Maybe I am brain dead!
| spookthesunset wrote:
| If you want to listen to the dark/shady side of the body
| broker business check out this swindled podcast. These dudes
| were chopping up bodies and storing parts in buckets, warm
| coolers, you name it.
|
| It's quite a listen!
|
| https://swindledpodcast.com/podcast/84-the-body-broker/
| kendallpark wrote:
| Speaking from first-hand, I can't remember any disrespectful
| behavior. Acting disrespectful toward the donor (what we
| called the cadavers) would get you kicked out of anatomy lab.
| There is even a "gift of body" ceremony commemorating the
| donations every year that family members can attend. Med
| students will speak about how the donors impacted their
| medical education and how much they appreciate them.
|
| I would hope that tales of inappropriate jokes of posing with
| body parts are relegated to a bygone era.
|
| Fwiw I would have no issue donating my body to my institution
| for dissection. I certainly benefited from the donation. Some
| notable memories:
|
| - The brittleness and _crunchiness_ of an atherosclerotic
| artery compared to the pliable rubber hose of a healthy
| artery
|
| - How incredibly soft lungs are -- like a tempur-pedic
| pillow. Unless the donor had been a smoker. Then the lungs
| were hard and black-spotted like a pumice stone.
|
| - The muscular atrophy of old age. There were some donors
| whose abdominal muscles were as thin as paper.
|
| - Holding a donors brain in one's hand (it's smaller than one
| would expect). In the words of a lab partner, "I can't
| believe we are holding everything that made this person a
| _person_ , all their personality, everything."
| cloverich wrote:
| Also speaking from first hand I remember quite a bit of
| "disrespect". Jokes were outright common. The vast majority
| of interactions were respectful of course -- its hard work
| studying anatomy after all. But TBH many folks in medicine
| can be quite callous, which I find not unrelated to the
| task at hand (i.e. dealing with the crazy and brutal facts
| of us all being mushy living creatures at a much higher
| rate than most people). Standing in a room full of dead
| bodies being dissected... isn't really normal. And it takes
| a toll.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > Holding a donors brain in one's hand (it's smaller than
| one would expect). In the words of a lab partner, "I can't
| believe we are holding everything that made this person a
| person, all their personality, everything."
|
| Thought provoking. I'll keep this in mind while holding a
| hundred billion apples during lunch. ;)
|
| From another angle, I would argue that the eyes and face
| are part of what makes a human, as are the hands. And
| there's also something in the brain that has been lost,
| something beyond mere physical matter. An easy example of
| this is a puzzle, if you're putting a puzzle together, and
| I come in and mix it up, I've taken something from you, and
| yet I took no material object away. There's probably some
| organization that's part of our brain and "humanity" that
| is lost at death. I'm not talking about religious "spirit"
| here - back to the puzzle, it has no spirit, but an
| assembled puzzle is more than the physical material it is
| made of.
|
| I don't mean to be super critical of your lab partner, just
| sharing some additional philosophical views.
| kendallpark wrote:
| > From another angle, I would argue that the eyes and
| face are part of what makes a human, as are the hands.
|
| I also agree with this take, though in the moment at the
| lab I didn't interject with a critique of mind-body
| dualism. Either way, it seems the brain has some sort of
| primacy over other organs, in terms of contributing to
| personhood. Pretty much everything else could be lost or
| transplanted, yet we'd still consider someone the _same_
| person. The brain however seems essential in making you
| _you_.
| msrenee wrote:
| The comment you're replying to is talking about discussion
| of the experience (hopefully after the fact). I don't think
| that they're claiming the bodies are being disrespectfully
| handled. I'm assuming they're talking about the black humor
| people use to cope with being surrounded by illness and
| death.
|
| Mom's a nurse, so it never struck me as odd or mean-
| spirited. It finally dawned on me when she cracked a joke
| in response to a question grandma asked about a work story
| mom was telling at a family get-together. It went over
| grandma's head, thankfully. It was a pretty good pun, but I
| think that was the first time I realized that not everyone
| is used to that sort of talk.
| qikInNdOutReply wrote:
| Others demanding a "respectful" treatment, usually mean, that
| handling, diposal and research on remains, should be treated
| by a seperate group of persons. One which they usually shun
| socially, should they ever talk about or discuss there work
| or parts of it. So the respectful treatment, is actually code
| for "I do not want to talk about that, or engage with that,
| unless i must."
|
| Meanwhile, pathology is such a interesting science.
| Especially the quite visual signs of self inflicted decay due
| to substance abuse or bad living conditions are very hands
| on. Also the realization, that the body is a self deprecating
| machine, adapting to all circumstances.
|
| Great german book on famous dead people and the source of
| there demise: https://www.amazon.de/Woran-sie-wirklich-
| starben-Pers%C3%B6n...
| Hnrobert42 wrote:
| Interesting. I did not take the author's tone in a
| disrespectful way. It wasn't solemn, but it wasn't flippant. It
| appeared they had a genuine desire to learn about the body.
| That seems just as noble as a med student who isn't really
| interested in medicine beyond a job that makes money and their
| parents happy.
| [deleted]
| thenerdhead wrote:
| Many medical students have their cadaver stories that have
| similar intrusive thoughts.
|
| Some of those thoughts were shared out loud and definitely come
| off as ignorant due to the curiosity of the writer.
|
| There's a book I read recently "When Breath Becomes Air" that
| talks about this rite of passage and the "respect" for
| mortality that isn't always shared by first year med students.
| jstanley wrote:
| In what way is the OP's interest in dissecting cadavers not
| "legitimate"?
| codingdave wrote:
| They don't seem to be doing this to pursue anything other
| than personal curiosity. And fairly light-hearted curiosity
| at that -- the tone of the article, to me, sounds more like,
| "Ooh, nerves are neat!" than someone trying to build a body
| of knowledge for a larger purpose.
|
| I'm not going to go so far to say that only med students
| should have access to cadavers... but this article does feel
| like a rando just cutting someone up for fun, and that feels
| a bit off to me.
| est31 wrote:
| The person being cut up is not hurt, they gave their
| consent to be cut up. So why should third parties
| intervene? Of course if there is a shortage of dead bodies,
| medical students should be prioritized, but why not also
| open it to everyone. In fact, it is better IMO to have this
| regulated by universities as those will help with
| maximizing the learning, and ensure it happens in a
| respecting environment.
| ohwellhere wrote:
| It's funny how differently people can read things, and how
| different contexts color our impressions.
|
| On most topics, this community mostly values pursuing
| personal curiosity even if it's not for a larger purpose.
| We never know where we will find larger purposes, after
| all! And following interest and desire is generally a
| valued habit.
|
| I didn't get the impression they were a rando "cutting
| someone up for fun" (note "someone"). I did get the
| impression they were a rando who wanted to know more about
| the human body, with a particular interest in the nervous
| system likely from a career in AI/ML. Note how the author
| has a better appreciation for the effects of disease, for
| the effects of exercise, and how they had intuitional leaps
| around brain structure and its applicability to ML as well
| as nascent intuition around the importance of social
| systems to evolution.
|
| Personally I'm really glad that these opportunities exist.
| Most bodies become ash or sit rotting unnaturally slowly.
| This is a better use, even for lay people with idle
| curiosity.
| bongwater_OS wrote:
| I had the same impression from the article, and I'm glad
| you brought up the value of pursuing personal curiosity.
|
| This brings up a central question about the value of
| collective vs individual knowledge. If you donated your
| body, would you rather help a lot of people a little or a
| few people a lot?
|
| If I knew that my body had the power to bring about a
| truly humbling, enriching, and perspective changing
| experience to a few individuals, I would be happy with
| that. In an indirect way, it might be so inspiring for
| those individuals as to result in a net gain of
| collective knowledge in the future.
| drakonka wrote:
| When you say it now I see what you mean, but when first
| reading the article I read of it more as awe and the act of
| understanding humanity on a deeper level - a physical level
| of course, but also transcendent somehow. I don't know if
| that makes sense... When I look back at it having read your
| comment, I also doubt my initial more generous view of the
| situation.
| mzs wrote:
| "I've even taken a date there, and she enjoyed it!"
| jstanley wrote:
| So is the illegitimate part the fact that they brought a
| date, or the fact that she enjoyed it?
|
| If you brought a date to a makerspace, would that make your
| interest in the makerspace illegitimate? Only if she enjoys
| it?
| euroderf wrote:
| Contemplating human innards makes me queasy PDQ. Somewhat
| relatedly, I unreservedly reject tattoos as a desecration of the
| gift of nature.
|
| That all being said, I agree, this essay was well-written and
| appropriately respectful. Thank you for posting !
| caycep wrote:
| Honestly, from my experiences in medical school, cadavers smell
| strongly like formaldehyde, and all the tissues are brown,
| atrophied, and hard to distinguish. I remember realizing my
| understanding of anatomy (at least abdominal) increased way more
| from watching surgery on healthy tissue than an entire year of
| clinical anatomy courses...
| astrea wrote:
| > No wonder our feet have so many problems: they were once hands
|
| Isn't this backwards? Or am I mistaken about human evolution? My
| understand was that our ancestors were not arboreal and walked on
| all fours then we adapted to walking upright. Therefore, feet
| became hands.
| akiselev wrote:
| That is some overt bipedalism there :)
|
| Many (most?) monkeys like chimpanzees have opposable thumbs on
| their "feet" so they're more like a second pair of hands, which
| get exercised as such by gripping tree branches. Humans, on the
| other hand, keep their bottom hands in rigid clothing so they
| never get any real exercise.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Two observations I've heard from a young relative who has done
| cadaver dissection at scale, and is qualified to teach the
| subject in Med. School:
|
| - "You want a facility with _good_ ventilation. Doesn 't take an
| M.D. to understand that breathing the vapors from embalming
| fluids, intestine contents, etc. is bad."
|
| - "Once you get the head off, the rest is easy."
| MrFantastic wrote:
| Hands are also very weird. Our brain identifies with our faces
| and hands.
| [deleted]
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| For once an article I'm happy doesn't have pictures.
| zeristor wrote:
| Two amazing BBC documentaries, although not currently available:
|
| The Incredible Human Hand:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01mv2md
|
| The Incredible Human Foot:
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01mv2rj
|
| This is listed as being shown in 2020, however I watched 2017 or
| so, perhaps it has been updated.
| scandox wrote:
| There is an excellent chapter in Ghost in The Throat[1] that
| answers this question in a somewhat more poetical fashion.
|
| [1] https://tramppress.com/product/a-ghost-in-the-throat-by-
| doir...
| s1mon wrote:
| I spent three days in a cadaver lab with two severed heads. I was
| helping develop a tool to place a wound dressing in the sinuses
| after an ethmoidectomy. For most of the time we had cloth draped
| over most of the head except the nose, but I did end up seeing
| the severed neck and the faces. You really can't unsee that.
|
| The facility we used also did animal experiments, which I really
| don't want to know about, but there was an amazing photocopied
| chart taped up in the locker room with diagrams of how to put
| notches in mouse ears in order to encode numbers on them.
| nbadg wrote:
| I took a cadaver lab as part of a functional biomechanics class
| during grad school. It was focused around, well, biomechanics --
| how the body moves, how joints work, the mechanisms behind
| various injuries, that kind of thing. It was cross-listed between
| the engineering department and med school, so there were a good
| mix of people there. It was also only one component in an
| _extremely_ intensive course (I think we averaged something like
| 9-10hrs/week total on just that single course), but still IIRC
| (this was 2012ish) we spent around 1.5hrs with the cadaver every
| week for the whole semester. I also worked for a little while as
| an EMT, so I've dealt with patients while they're still alive,
| and I've done some (though just a little) work on the theoretical
| side of things, doing some research into various prostheses,
| osseointegration, and so forth, as part of my grad school
| coursework, plus some simulation work -- FEA, muscle activation
| models, that kind of things. It was very much a breadth search,
| and (for lack of a better word) I "enjoyed" every minute of it.
| Or maybe "rewarding" would be better here, I don't know. At least
| for me, it was a very unique headspace -- though one that I
| ultimately left, for reasons that aren't relevant here.
|
| I think it's okay to find the biological systems behind your own
| body fascinating, even to the point of excitement. There's a very
| good talk by John Cleese about the difference between seriousness
| and solemnity, and I see some very strong parallels here. It's
| also worth mentioning that western attitudes towards death are
| both historically a very new thing and also, well, weird. If you
| grew up in the west, it's likely all you're used to, but these
| days we live in a world that has dramatically less death in it
| than even 50 years prior. I mean, entire industries have sprung
| up around this almost... deification, this sanctification of
| death. And to be perfectly honest, I think it's unhealthy to
| think of something so deeply integral to the natural world as
| something to be so shy about. But perspective is always important
| to have; for me, I think often about the idea of death. To really
| internalize what it means, that this thing was once moving and
| breathing and thinking, with a rich inner existence, just like
| me. And yet I have a (sometimes extremely) dark sense of humor.
| Comes with the territory, I think.
|
| In the last day of our cadaver lab, we had some extra time, and
| we basically had, well, free reign. To be clear, at that point,
| the cadaver was in pretty rough shape. Turns out that pretty much
| everywhere on the body has muscle, bone, and connective tissue --
| the exact things you're interested in from a biomechanics
| perspective. So pretty much the only two things left were inside
| the thoracic cavity, or the brain. There were other cadavers we
| could look at (but not dissect), so pretty much any of the end
| states we could just walk a few meters away and see. But looking
| at a diseased lung from an already-dissected cadaver still isn't
| the same as opening up the chest cavity yourself, so that's what
| we did. And it was deeply fascinating, even though it wasn't
| directly relevant to the class. That sense of... excited
| fascination... is something I can really relate to in the OP's
| article. I think that's okay, maybe even healthy, and I can
| imagine it being a powerful driver for people who decide to do,
| for example, biomechanics research. But again, perspective is
| important -- don't forget that you're standing there, dissecting,
| and the cadaver, well, can't do that anymore. So while I can
| absolutely emphasize with the fascination of it, the discovery of
| it...
|
| ...never in a million years would I consider bringing a _date_ to
| a cadaver lab.
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