CHAPTER SIX : DISSECTING RELATIONS AND WOW

DISSECTING RELATIONS AND WOW

Curiosity, fear, doubt, hesitation, joy of doing something forbidden are some of the many strange feelings associated with dissection of human bodies. That still remains a unique experience as a medical student.

can you believe a human dissection hall in a guest house? this was because when we entered the college the main college building was under final phase of construction. our dissection hall was on the top floor of old three storied building actually made to be a guest house.

on one end of our beautiful campus, there were hostels, mess and the new college building, the other end about 3kms away, had staff quarters and a guest house converted in our temporary college.

since my sister neha studied MBBS in MP shah medical college jamnagar, i had some idea of the dissection hall. still, i never had seen it with my own eyes. we were taken to dissection hall on our first anatomy day. as soon as we entered the hall,I remember one of my batch mate fell down! immediately he was taken care of by our instructors. The hall was emanating a typical smell of carcasses and formalin. Some of the bodies were covered with white clothes while others were open for work. The skin had lost the natural color and looked blackish brown. The faces of the bodies looked horrible at first sight.

All human machinery was intact with help of formalin but no activity, no thoughts, no feelings. such sight naturally would trigger chain of thoughts. the first thing which came to mind was We all would be like these bodies one day… and no one was an exception. the bodies were silent but what they might have thought at the time of their death? what experience they would have undergone which we still are to face? scary? horrible? or just like deep sleep after painful bodily suffering? How they might have decided about their own body’s donation leaving all the religious beliefs like moksha, heaven, hell and especially avgat(soul not resting in peace after death) in absence of religious rituals after death? what about their near and dear ones? what would they feel if they see their loved one's half cut body in our hall?

the instructor guided our batch in the hall.the hall was damn big.we were told to keep silence. the batch was further divided in small groups of about 5-6 students. we were allotted different tables for dissection of human body.

on our table, there was a body covered with white cloth like all others. it looked something scary under the cloth. suppose if we removed the cloth and the the body waked up? an irrational thought! but i tell you , humans are basically irrational and first thought they have for any new experience is usually deep from their minds without a drop of rationale! our brain starts working after getting irrational jolts from naked mind!
after listening to to instructor one of my batch mate removed the cloth gracefully. ouch! the horrifying body was of a female about 50-60 yrs old. her eyes were closed and her face looked in deep sleep. the skin was dark because of effect of the preservatives.

the first day was just for the orientation purpose.we were to start our dissection from the parts of upper limb. we were told about our instruments to be used for dissection like scalpel, bone cutter, toothed and tissue forceps etc.

the hall was big and there were about 6-8 tables for dissection. on each table, there was a dead body. as i looked around, There was one big tank at the terrace. That was the store, i mean, store for dead bodies!with a bit of fear, i went near it just to have a look. it was partially covered. still i could peek in that scary tank. damn it! The sight was not less than any Hollywood horror film.i saw All the bodies in that store tank were immersed in the preservative chemical. Lifeless, dumped on one another like wood. Their hairs were floating in the chemical and the eyes were staring beyond life. can you imagine your own body in such situation?

We were told that all the bodies were donated. The people donated their bodies for noble cause to help medical students to study human machine and use their knowledge for humanity.
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The workers handling the dead bodies under the guidance of the tutors and prof.s were completely indifferent for the bodies as it was their daily work. They were moving the dead bodies like any other inanimate object.

“Do you have bone set?” a dead body like looking man asked when i was just looking around. Apart from doing dissection of the human bodies we had to study the skeletal structure. For that we had to have a whole real human skeletal set. The man who asked the question was a pune in deptt of anatomy running bone business along with. “come to me after the class.I have a few sets. You can select one” his name was Josef probably.

We went for selection of the set and I chose one fine sturdy bone set for me. Since the skull had to be studied from inside also, the seller cut the skull vault for student’s benefit. It was around 1500 Rs. At that time As I remember.

Back at the dissection hall, we had dr rakesh Gandhi, dr gedia and one more lady tutor her name was probably mrs dalwadiya and she used to pronounce “budi” in place of “body” while teaching.

Dr. Gandhi was finest possible tutor. He not only had good knowledge of the subject but was also very much empathetic for the students. Dr. Gandhi was a good dissector and used to show us difficult parts.


For students from gujarati medium the questions were many. How anterior is different than ventral? Why dorsal is not posterior? Why anterior remained anterior and posterior remained posterior even after turning the body on the abdomen? How could “cephalic” be pronounced? Some teachers were pronouncing as “sefelic” while others “kephalic”! Why anatomical position for penis is erect even if it is not the usual position?

We felt the Gujarat secondary board should have taught us human body in spite of frog if they really wished to help us study medicine or biology. I felt they should have been shown at least one volume of our dissection manual by Cunningham, if not textbook of anatomy- gray.

The dissection manual had amazing pictures of human structures. We were supposed to dissect and see those structures. Our batch was to start with the dissection of human upper limb. The batch further was divided in group of 5 to 6 students. We had to perform the dissection at each session till a given point.

The feel of the dead skin was quite hard than expected. It required good amount of force to cut it open. There was no bleeding as blood was replaced with formalin, a very sticky chemical. We had to rub our hands very hard in attempt to get its smell off the hands before going for lunch or dinner.

I really still do not understand why we were not allowed to wear gloves while performing dissection. In fact, as our seniors told their experience, our professors would get angry if they saw any one using gloves in the dissection hall.

when i was in bhuj, some of my friends had a few queries.
-how can you take food immediately after a session of dissection of human body? Do not you feel ugly?
-are all the structure inside same for all the bodies?
-how human brain looks?

While others had irrational but real fears
-do you see any ghosts near your anatomy deptt?
-do the dead bodies come in your dreams to warn you?
-how can you sleep keeping human skull near your bed?
-do the professors perform any yagna or hanuman chalisa to keep ghosts away from them? In their opinion - They must be- might be doing that secretly.


Some were curious for other reasons.
-do they give you naked bodies? Even of females?
-do the girls and boys dissect such bodies in one group? Even the private parts?
-do you really discuss such parts with the girls? Do not they feel awkward?


There was one popular story connecting ragging and dissection told by my friends at bhuj-
When juniors join the college, the seniors, for ragging, would ask them to go to the dissection hall at night along with seniors. While seniors would stay outside, the junior would be forced to go inside the hall to put lollypop in mouth of each of the dead bodies. The junior, frightened but finding no other way would do the dreadful job. He would plant the lollypop one by one. After placing the last, he would try to dart out the hall but the last dead body being one of the mischievous senior, sit up and speak “oh, very nice lollypop! May I get another one??”

Back In the hall the scenes were very different. Almost all the students got comfortable with the dissection within a week or so. All the feelings attached with the dead bodies gradually perished as we got deeper in the technicalities and as it became a daily routine job. you forget what you did just 10 min back when you are hungry and when that becomes your routine. i do not remember any one from our batch not eating or vomiting after lunch.

none of our professors or tutors or even the seniors told any superstitious stories about the dissection.

since there was no distinction between girls and boys, The hall was a good place to interact with all.naturally the human bodies were given naked for dissection.but when you are burdened with so much of academic technicality, you hardly can think anything else than to complete your work on the body. it was natural to dissect and discuss all parts amongst boys and girls. thus the interaction of boys and girls was very close and so The process of “coupling” started right from the hall for many of the successful couples of our batch. For example, sameer – margee from our table.

Some of the students, especially boys, learned the job of finely dissecting the anatomical structures quite well and used it to impress the girl members of the team.We were free to go to any table to see the dissected structures.sometimes even our tutors used to ask us to go to a particular table to see a finely dissected structure there.

“Now I can show you greater and lesser sac! Come this side please!” and the girl would go to his side to all his pleasure to study the part! Not only that, she would screech “my goodness! How beautiful!” her words would attract more honey bees to his advantage from other groups also.

Some of the boys were real boys.
“Guys, what I do you know?” one of my friends said revealing his secret “I do not waste time in digging up the deep structures” he smiled and looked into our eyes as if he was to reveal ultimate knowledge on the earth. “I go to any pretty girl’s table and request her to show the deepest structure dissected. She would bend down to show it….. And what you see…! WOW!”