On the Autopsy

Final year in medical school requires us to observe at least 4 autopsies being done. Not that I'm particularly interested in this subspecialty, but I was very keen in going down into the autopsy theatre rather than standing behind those glass doors and observe the procedure in mute.

The body we had was actually a motor vehicle accident victim. All cold and rigored when we entered the theatre. Pupils were dilated and fixed.

The coroner started off with the head actually, cutting through the scalp, pulled the skin and flapped it over the face. Then the machine saw came in, cutting through the body's hardest bone, and the brain comes out.

What comes later seemed to be more gross than the brain. Apparently, after cutting up the body, they had to pull out the whole alimentary tract, which means all the way from the tongue. For once I saw a tongue on its own, which is pretty... meaty.

But after that, it was what we saw in our first year during the anatomy class. We've seen the organs, touched and played around with it. But one thing for sure, the smell was pretty uncomfortable. It wasn't smelly, but rather it's like the smell of a meat market. Those raw meat and fat. Nauseating.

The organs were sliced open to find out the cause of death, and in this case cereberal hematoma. Lungs were black, stained with tar from the smoking most probably. But otherwise the organs were generally fine-looking to me.

About 1hour later, the body was stitched back to its' original form. Cloth was stuffed into the neck to replace the trachea pulled out. The scalp was stitched, and the body looked as if this cadaver underwent quite an extensive surgery with the scar coming down all the way from the chest to the pubes.

Here's a video clip I came across on you tube which is of the least gross, you can watch it without the commentary, but if you're adventurous enough, go ahead and listen to what the coroner said, pretty interesting stuff, very educational too...