"Reflections on the First Day of Cadaveric Dissection" by MSIH second year blogger Dvora Feinblum

After our first day of dissections…exhausted but happy.
Today my classmates and I had our first dissection lab, and below is a slightly freeform reflection on the day. Apologies that it is coming from a slightly exhausted new second year med student, who hopes it is at least somewhat coherent. It was a completely new and unique experience, thus I have many, many thoughts and reflections on it, some of which are listed here:

1.      Donning our scrubs, gloves, and sneakers and entering the dissection room was definitely a rite of passage which I have been anticipating for a long long time. I use the term anticipate rather than “look forward to” because dissection of a human cadaver brings about a strange array of emotions. There is of course, a certain amount of nervousness, as well as (for me at least) excitement. But my overwhelming feeling today in the lab was one of awe. I am in awe of those who gave us their bodies so that we can learn how to be the best doctors we can be. I am in awe of the fact that I have the immense privilege to be here, and to be on the path to becoming a doctor.

2.      Something I think about a lot while studying medicine is the fact that all humans beings have a body, but very few of us truly understand how our bodies work. This thought was at the forefront of my thoughts today. If I lived in a neighborhood, surely I would come to know the many streets and roads and alleyways, and the faces and features of the area. But within our own bodies, very few of us are exposed to the inner “roadmap” in the way we would with a neighborhood. We are incredibly privileged, as medical students, to be able to have access to such an incredible resource  (the cadavers) that will enable us to know these bodily “neighborhoods” quite well.

3.      One of the things I had been most nervous about with cadavers is that I (very luckily!) have had limited exposure to dead bodies in my life. Being in a room with 13 of them is definitely jarring, however, I was surprised how non-human the cadavers seemed. Because of the preservation process, their skin is no longer lifelike, and their faces remained covered while we worked with them. This led to a certain level of calmness in the room. However small reminders of their human-ness kept cropping up – for example painted nails or a mole that looked like one I myself have. As the year goes by and we inevitably become desensitized to the fact that we are working on human bodies, I truly hope that these vestiges of personhood remain.

4.      In that vein (no pun intended), as we did the dissection, I tried to think about our cadaver as a person. He had a life, a name, perhaps he had a family, and children, and a job he enjoyed. He had hobbies, and friends, and experiences. He probably fell in love and had his heart broken, and celebrated the other valleys and peaks of life that we all do. We must always remember this while we do the dissection. This was a real person, and we owe his body and his memory the utmost respect (as well as gratitude).

5.      Anatomy so far has been very, very cool. Upperclassmen have complained profusely about its difficulty, and they are definitely right, this class will certainly not be easy. However, today gave us a taste of what real medicine is like. We got to see the structures we’ve been learning about in the classroom in real life. We dissected ribs and used a bone saw, and examined the body from different angles.  I am most certainly looking forward to the rest of this exploration of the human body.



Well, as a wise man once said, “that’s all folks”. The time has come for me to take a very long shower and try get rid of the formaldehyde stench (although I fear it will linger), and then to go and sit with my anatomy atlas, but I hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about the first day of lab from a student’s perspective. Layla tov!

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