Tag: Dissection
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Opening the left ventricle
This image is from Henry W. Cattell’s 1905 Post-mortem pathology; a manual of post-mortem examinations and the interpretations to be drawn therefrom; a practical treatise for students and practioners. It shows the approach for opening the left ventricle after the heart is removed from the body. Highlighted Vignette Volume 12, Issue 4 – Fall 2020…
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Atlas of head sections
Sir William Macewen, pioneer of modern brain surgery, was born in western Scotland in 1848. In 1872 he graduated in medicine from the University of Glasgow, greatly influenced by Lord Lister. In 1875 he was appointed to the Glasgow Royal Infirmary, first as assistant surgeon, and in 1877 as full surgeon. Continuing his career as…
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An interrupted dissection
The increasing interest in teaching anatomy by dissecting the human cadaver had a sordid side—the practice of body snatching, the illegal removal of corpses from graves, often by organized gangs of so-called resurrectionists. Body snatching was first recorded in Italy as early as the fourteenth century and as the centuries went on it became widespread…
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The female body dissected: Anatomy and John Keats
Niamh Davies-Branch Aberdeen, United Kingdom A boiled gland with rose-like folds from Sir Astley Cooper’s Plates of the Anatomy of the Breast. Plates of the Anatomy of the Breast by Sir Astley Cooper in Sir Duncan Rice Library Special Collections, Aberdeen, UK John Keats, poet of the great odes, was also a surgical apprentice…
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Learning anatomy in medical school
Peter H. BerczellerDordogne, France An excerpt from Dr. Peter Berczeller’s memoir, The Little White Coat. On the second day of medical school, we were invited to meet the cadaver we would be working on for the next six months. I trooped up with the rest of the class into a large unheated space on the…
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Haunting poetic characteristics: the dissection scene from Doctor Zhivago
Timo HannuHelsinki, Finland Doctor Zhivago, a novel by the Russian poet Boris Pasternak, tells the story of physician-poet Yura Zhivago during the turmoil of the first decades of the twentieth century in Russia. The character of Dr. Zhivago is portrayed as follows:1 “Though he was greatly drawn to art and history, he scarcely hesitated over…
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Why did Darwin drop out of medical school?
Richard Brown and Thalia Garvock-de MontbrunHalifax, Nova Scotia, Canada Erasmus Alvey (Ras) Darwin, the elder brother of Charles Darwin, completed six months of hospital training in Edinburgh in 1825-26 and then went to London to study at the Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy.1,7 Charles Darwin studied medicine at Edinburgh University from 1825-1827 and then…
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Anatomy before Vesalius
Not until about 1300 were human bodies dissected for teaching and learning anatomy. In those days, dissecting a cadaver was an especially unpleasant business. Since there was no refrigeration, it was necessary to dissect the most perishable parts first—beginning with the abdominal cavity, then the thorax, and finally the head and the extremities. A dissection…
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Dissecting cadavers: Learning anatomy or a rite of passage?
Emmanuelle GodeauToulouse, France 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…