Our preliminary lecture in anatomy was largely consumed by the Professor informing us that Anatomy was the most important subject that we would ever study and that a doctor without extensive knowledge of anatomy would simply be a butcher, or as a respected pathologist said of his specialty, without a deep understanding of pathology (and even more so anatomy) a surgeon is simply "A hewer of flesh and a drawer of blood'. This was, of course, before I realized that regardless of the topic we were studying, its professor emphasized that his subject was the one essential topic in producing competent physicians. He went on to explain to us that we would be divided into teams of six students and that each group would have a cadaver assigned to them. We would spend the next year systemically dissecting the body in synchronization with the series of lectures and demonstrations we would receive in the lecture theatre. The dissection room, a short walk from the lecture theatre was divided into alcoves, each with a centrally placed gurney on which lay a cadaver, covered with a sheet. Each member of each team would have designated duties and in the paired appendages or organs there would be three students working on the left or the right side. After we had been instructed in the respect due to the cadavers we were to learn from and been given a list of the surgical instruments that we would require and the texts that we would need, we set out for the a quick tour of the dissection room.
We walk out of the lecture theatre, excited and a little apprehensive at the thought of meeting real dead bodies that shortly thereafter we would be dissecting. The professor has dumped us and we are now being shepherded by our 'demonstrators', young newly graduated physicians usually specializing in surgery, who are fine tuning their anatomy knowledge and earning a few bucks at the same time. As we walk out of the lecture theatre and outside of the building every one pulls out their cigarettes and lights up. That was normal in those days when almost everyone smoked.
" Gotta fag?" I ask Maud, an older woman of about twenty eight, who was my new friend since sitting next to me at the lecture a little earlier, by virtue of her name starting with the same initial as mine. I was to sit next to her at lectures for several years. I was eighteen at the time.
With most of us pulling on our cigarettes to allay our excitement and apprehension and to look cool ,we entered the dissecting roomroom. This was a large room with alcoves each of which had a Gurney, head in towards the wall, so that of each team of six, three could work on each side simultaneously. (Fortunately most parts of the human body are paired.) The overwhelming stench of formaldehyde had most of us just a little queasy. The bodies, tastefully covered by sheets last waiting for us to start dissecting them next week. We didn't know their individual histories, but we knew where they came from. Some noble individuals decided in advance that they wanted to donate their body to the medical school in the belief that it would help medical science, which was true. Others were people who died in hospital or nursing homes or in the street and had no family or funds. Some ended up in the dissecting room, where they were treated respectfully, made their contribution to science and were given a decent and dignified burial.
Maud walked over to ' our' cadaver and gently pulled back the sheet.
"Not very old," she said, "quite good looking and not very old. I wonder what he did in life?"
"Okay," said another S in our group, "why don't we go across the road to Johnson Mooney's for a cup of coffee and a roll? I'm really hungry.
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