Prescott journal. [volume] (Prescott, Wis.) 1861-1871, 1867-02-16
GENERAL INTELLIGENCE
scene I'm a DIsseetIng Room.

A New York reporter has recently
taken few notes in medical college,
where he found hundreds of young
men, and few women, fitting them
selves for the business of prescribing
for ''all the ills that flesh is heir TO.
The following relative to the dissecting
room, will be found interesting:
In the evening, the medical students
who are earnest enough to seek, by
hard work, to obtain a knowledge of
| ing rooms, of which there are several,
located in different parts of the city.
The largest and finest of them is loca-
ted in the upper part of a college build
ing, where twenty-five or thirty tables
are ranged between half dozen rows
of bright gas lights. Around the sides
of the rooms forty or more closets are
numbered and SET apart for the
use of students, who change
their clothing whenever they en-
gage in the work of dissection. The
tables are about six feet long by eigh-
teen inches wide, and three feet six
inches high, one end being inclined for
drainage. purposes, Under direction
of the college faculty, subjects @. +,
dead bodies-are procured and brought
to this room, which, although thor
oughly ventilated, smells very much
like slaughter-house, which it resem-
bles in some respects Headless, leg
less, and armless bodies occupy some of
| the tables. On others untouched bodies
await the disposition of the demon
strator," who apportions it according to
| the demand; one student asking for a
head and neck, another taking the
| trunk; one gets an arm or a leg; in
short, that body is divided according to
the inclination or desire of the different
dissectors to pursue their Investigations
of certain portions of the human anat-
omy. Il is a CHASTITY sight to witness a
score of dead bodies, or as many por-
tions thereof, lying in all stages of dis
section, stiff and sstark, surrounded by
young men clad in butchers over
alls, and armed with small scalpels, with
which they cut away flesh, fat, or mus
cular fibre, while following up veins or
| arteries to their connections with vital
parts or searching into the structure
of heart, lungs or kidneys, according
to the bent of their studies. Upon one
| table lay the uncovered form of wo-
man, but few hours dead. Near by
| the inanimate body of muscular look
/ ing man and farther on, the corpse
Of pretty little child, with haxen
curls, was being cut up for the benefit
of living children +; two students were
working together upon this small ''sub-
iect," which they treated somewhat
tenderly. With open books before
them, these young men deity ply their
sharp steel instruments, the incised
flesh being held open by small hooks
chained together in a manner that en-
ables the operator to obtain an untram-
meled working space upon that part of
the body which he is investigating.
When these subjects are first brought
to the dissecting room, an attendant
injects into the veins a preparation of
plaster colored with vermillion. This
brings out distinctly all minute courses
through which the blood passes, and
materially aids the student in tracing
their direction and function, besides
hardening and preserving, to some ex-
tent, the subject. Periodically, a
Demonstrators of Anatomy makes
his appearance in the dissecting room,
and discourses learnedly upon some
portion of anatomy laid bare before
the class, whose scalpels are all laid
down and tables are deserted, while
| they crowd around the Professor dur
| ing the delivery of his lecture. In
this manner the medical students are
practically taught much that other
| people only hear of or read about 1t
is not, therefore, surprising that they
soon become accustomed to scenes
which, at first sight of the dissecting
room, eurdle the blood in their veins.
This familiarity with the dead, and
the handling of different portions of a
body, very soon becomes attractive
work to some of the students, who
composedly eat their luncheon while
sitting alongside of one corpse. and
surrounded by many others. Undue
levity is frowned upon by the profess
sors and gentlemen in attendance; but,
nevertheless, at times some fun-loving
youngster pepetrates a joke, which is
quite out of place In the dissecting
room.
AS a general rule, the remains are
treated as respectfully as the pursuit of
science permits, and when a subject
has been sufficiently dissected, the
flesh and bones are gathered up and
disposed of for proper burial. From
two days to three weeks is sometimes
occupied in the disposal of the body,
although it not unirequently happens
that head, an arm or leg, Is retained
for month or more, during which
time some student is engaged, for sew
eral hours daily, investigating its
structure. When the work of
one day is left over, to be continued on
the following day, it is usually covered |
with oiled silk, or wrapped in a cloth,
for the purpose CT excluding the at
mosphere, which would decompose the
Subject" During the winter season
such preparations are not so frequently |
resorted to. In cold weather the body |
is better kept uncovered; therefore |
each student, when he leaves his t'dis-1
section" merely pins upon the flesh
piece of paper bearing mis- name, thus
giving notice to the attendants and all |
others that he proposes to resume OPP
erations again.