subject: Feminine Power - It Fears Not The Cadaver [print this page] I remember the apprehension that I felt as I approached the Gross Anatomy laboratory as a fresh year student at the College of Medicine.
This was the laboratory where the preserved cadavers (dead bodies treated-on) were kept for new entrants like me to get to study with, all of the features of the human anatomy.
It was part of one whole week of orientation around the key departments of the College, that we fresh, lively medical students had to undertake, and this morning it was the turn of the Gross Anatomy laboratory to receive us.
I had wondered all week about this day with a little dread and this morning, I walked into the large-chambered laboratory. What first hit me as I stepped into the room already full of my mates, was the powerful and choking smell of formaldehyde - the chemical preservative cadavers are treated-on with.
The large chamber was sectioned by separating walls with a metal trolley in each section and one whole cadaver, either a male or a female, on each trolley. I was faintly surprised at how dark and dry-looking some of them looked.
We gathered around two of the chambers with our instructor amidst us talking away as I tried to adjust to the surroundings, feeling a sense of excitement mixed with discomfort.
What however gave me much encouragement was the fact that everyone present appeared calm, almost nonchalant, even. In particularly this: The sight of several female students appearing all brightly clad in the fashion trend for females at the time, leaning calmly and confidently with their back-sides against one trolley that had one of the cadavers - a huge male - resting eternally on it, as they appeared to be listening attentively to the instructor. One or two might even have been chewing bubble-gum, so I seem to recall now!
I was quite impressed by this display of composure. Or were they internally as discomforted as I was? I Guess I'll never really know.
Later that day I prepared to have lunch at the cafeteria back at the hostel. While at the lab, I concluded that I would be unable to stomach any food for over the next day or so. So, you can imagine my surprise when I began to eat the food hungrily after a tiring day, with thoughts of the sight of those awful cadavers not really giving me any qualms while I ate.
A week or so later, we walked into the lab to find we had been grouped; each group to a cadaver. We were about eight students in my group. I was disappointed to see that our own cadaver had been a dried-up, tiny old woman at the time of her death. This made it especially difficult to observe the various structures and tissue-layers which our anatomy practical manual illustrated to us week in, week out, as we went along each gross anatomy session, tearing-away at our cadaver in a methodological manner known as the dissection.
