We had a dissection for the first time today. Dissection is a subject to disassemble and observe a cadaver(a real human body) with a scapel and forcep. I think a real human body is used for this purpose only in medical school.
The First day ends up with remove skin and subcutaneious fatty tissue.
Around 20 people dissect 1 body, which is divided into 10 parts.
My region was right infraclavicular and axiallary region. That region has largest area so it was hard to remove skin and subcutaneous tissue. Subcutaneious Fatty Tissue was very yellow, that was impressive and somehow burned into my memory. Our body was female. the next group's body was male and the tissue was not as yellow as ours. (This difference is turned out not depending on sex but depending on how the prevservation was well done; Yellow is better, whitish is worse.)
Subcutaneous Fat is heard many times, but if you see and touch the real subcutaneious fat you would understand it better in Seeing-is-believing manner.
From now, we are going to dissect deeper area, such as muscles, nerves, blood vessels, lymphnodes etc. Axillary region have many nerve network called brachial plexus.
We have to memorize all names, origin and insertion and movement in case of musle, which nerve innervate which musles, which never innervate which part of skins. There are so many things to memorize. Note: These are rather covered by the subject "Anatomy". Dissection is hands-on experience, Anatomy focus on theory.
I think Anatomy and Dissection are characteristic for medical school. There are many students who have learned bioscience and related subjects. they said they learned anatomy but they did not use the real human body. Even if they use it, it was encased in a box and thus could not be touched directly. It is real human body so the management of it is not easy. I think it would be a big problem if one body was lost. There is legal issue too. It is illegal in hungary If you have have a part of body. Our teacher mentioned "so dun't buy a real skull it is illegal."
Hungary's medical school is said to emphasize hands-on experience, on the contrary Italy is theory oriented.(Their religion Catholics could be a reason for it.) We have dissection from 1st year, that is a sign of emphasizing hands-on experience. How about in Japan? It would not be from the first year, I guess.
The body has been preserved by Formalin(Formaldehyde). The substance stimulates our eyes and noses, that makes us shedding tears and having running nose. That is hard part for dissection. Everybody blows their noses.
Now looking back the experiecne, that was interesting and time flied quickly. It was impressive and I think this first experience will sit in our memory for a long time somehow.
Note: You may think it is better if we have photos here. Photo-taking is strictly prohibited. Because it is a real body and s/he has a family when s/he was alive. Imagine your family member's body is photo-taken easily and used as if it is nothing. Never forget it once has a life. Never forget to Respect the body and his/her family.