Cadavers

For my first 20 years at Saint Louis University School of Medicine, my lab was on the second floor of Doisy Hall. Occasionally, a sulfurous odor would appear in the lab, which I eventually learned was associated with the crematorium. Cadavers that had been used by medical students and residents for dissections and practice operations were cremated in an adjacent building and due to faulty tuckpointing, the smoke would escape into the air conditioning intakes to be distributed among several labs in Doisy Hall.

Human Anatomy was for many years the first course in medical school at SLUSOM, and was notoriously a source of much anxiety and some suicidal ideation among first years. So much so that about 10 years ago, it was moved to later in the first semester so that the first course was somewhat easier (the cell and molecular biology course I co-directed).

SLUSOM has remained among the diminishing number of US medical schools that still rely on donated cadavers to teach human anatomy.

“Predictably, the solemnity of the honor eventually wore off, as anatomy became just another line on a first-year medical student's lengthy to-do list. There was work to be done -- "today, dissect out the nerves of the forearm" -- and there was no time to pause and consider who this elderly woman had been, the people she had loved or who had loved her, or the meaning of her life. After all, it was her body that had been preserved in formalin, not her soul.

"That's what I remember most about the cadaver lab: the smell. Even with gloves on, the caustic stench got into your skin and followed you home. It came to be the smell of death, a "can't miss" kind of medical aroma, as strong as the fruity smell of ketones or the ominously dark and heavy smell of anaerobes on the prowl.”

With modern digital technologies, more and more schools are abandoning cadavers in favor of computer-based anatomy instruction. On balance, that’s probably a good thing.

“I'm not sure much will be lost when cadaver labs close. The dissection skills might have been useful to future surgeons, although my first impression on seeing the inner workings of a live human being during a third-year surgery rotation was that a living body doesn't look anything like what I saw in the cadaver lab.

"So out with the old, and in with the new. Out with the formalin and in with the virtual. Merge anatomy class with pathology class in a way that augments both. Tell the computer, "Show me a type-A aortic dissection." "Show me a healthy rotator cuff on the left and a torn one on the right." "L4-5 spondylolisthesis, please."

"Yes, the opportunity to dissect a cadaver was a humbling honor, but one that is logarithmically exceeded by the honor of caring for patients, of trying to figure out what ails them, and how to fix it. As the news piece details, Case Western faculty has found that 3D imaging helps students learn anatomy twice as fast and remember it longer. Why spend 3 hours tediously dissecting out the branches of the brachial plexus when there's more to know than ever before?"

https://www.medpagetoday.com/opinion/kevinmd/100465?xid=nl_popmed_2022-09-02&eun=g1700464d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=PopMedicine_090222&utm_term=NL_Gen_Int_PopMedicine_Active&fbclid=IwAR2HtaFPTBJfarLFw69wcQEYQ80WtSBRRLThr4geJ5PqwwzriOUUsmCpWD8