Dissecting Stories!!

[ch0sen1]

I am really interested in learning more about people's dissecting experiences. This semester was the first time I preformed dissections, and it was pretty cool!

We did multiple dissections on frogs this semester, and we dissected out the sciatic nerve and placed the nerve on conducting plates to see action potentials and tetanus on the computer screen (using amplifiers and oscilloscopes and such)...also doing heart labs where we exposed the heart and hooked it up to a force transducer to measure heart force, and also ECGs...pretty fun stuff.

In the end, I messed around and cut open the stomach, and found 15 full crickets all bundled up in the stomach!! THAT WAS HONESTLY THE GROSSEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. Almost made me kind of wheezy, lol. Oh, and besides the fact of seeing live frogs getting their poor heads chopped off, I enjoyed it.

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[Dissected]

I was interviewing at a school and a student had lacerated the cadavers lung causing all of this filmy white liquid to start pouring out. I forgot what they called it. It smelled like burnt cheese.

 

[Dirt]

I was gonna tell the story of when I cut the guy's heart out, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

 

[MedicalSonata]

I am really interested in learning more about people's dissecting experiences. This semester was the first time I preformed dissections, and it was pretty cool!

We did multiple dissections on frogs this semester, and we dissected out the sciatic nerve and placed the nerve on conducting plates to see action potentials and tetanus on the computer screen (using amplifiers and oscilloscopes and such)...also doing heart labs where we exposed the heart and hooked it up to a force transducer to measure heart force, and also ECGs...pretty fun stuff.

In the end, I messed around and cut open the stomach, and found 15 full crickets all bundled up in the stomach!! THAT WAS HONESTLY THE GROSSEST THING I HAVE EVER SEEN. Almost made me kind of wheezy, lol. Oh, and besides the fact of seeing live frogs getting their poor heads chopped off, I enjoyed it.

WTF are you talking about - live frogs getting their heads chopped off? They were put to sleep first, yes?

 

[Dissected]

I was gonna tell the story of when I cut the guy's heart out, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

KALI MAA!!! hahaha!

 

[NJDIF]

KALI MAA!!! hahaha!

1. +10 points for referencing the best of the 3 indiana jones movies.

2. just wait a little bit, then you'll have real big boy dissecting stories.

 

[SirGecko]

WTF are you talking about - live frogs getting their heads chopped off? They were put to sleep first, yes?

Well that and, does anyone actually cut off a frog's head to kill it? I was under the impression that pithing was pretty standard for sacrificing frogs when you want to dissect their living anatomy.

 

[funkymunkytoes]

I'm a TA for a comparative anatomy course, and when the students dissect the dogfish shark I tell them that if they squeeze the sperm sac, sperm will shoot 10+ feet--it always lightens the mood because it's there first major dissection (plus, it's damn impressive). Also, beware of colons, cutting into them = stink.

 

[Turtle01]

If you guys think this stuff was fun, wait till medical school where you get to use a black and decker sawzall to cut legs, arms, and heads (yes heads) in half. Kind of creepy, yet awesome.

 

[dr zaius]

The university I attended as an undergraduate used human cadavers for anatomy lab. Whenever a new body would arrive the TAs would do the majority of the dissections outside of lab times. I took a late lab my first semester at college (7:00-10:00pm), and they had just received a donated body. He was an extremely obese man who had a below the knee amputation and a stoma for a colostomy bag. Our TAs were very nice, and said if we wanted to we could stay after class and help out. All we ended up doing was trimming fat from the body, but it was really exciting at the time. We (the students) kept on for around 2 hours until the TAs finally kicked us out.

If you ever have the opportunity to take a class or have an experience that uses cadavers as teaching tools I highly reccommend it. Pictures in a book just don't compare to being able to touch/feel/poke the real thing.

 

[Textuality]

If you guys think this stuff was fun, wait till medical school where you get to use a black and decker sawzall to cut legs, arms, and heads (yes heads) in half. Kind of creepy, yet awesome.

Haha, we just used handsaws to split the skull down the middle We also took a chisel and hammer to it on multiple occasions to get at the spinal cord and eye muscles.

 

[justdoit31]

We did fetal pigs in general bio and the school had ordered disposable aprons for us- they happened to have the fetal pig cut open and labeled as the picture on the apron.

Well my professor and the other professor who was "assisting" (actually learning since he had not taught that lab before) both put on the aprons and started strutting down the lab aisles with model walks- PRICELESS

- one of my friends had a cadaver in her PT school that had undergone a sex change or something. She told us on her blog about the first day cutting open her lady and naming it X- the cadaver had blue nail polish and long hair. Well later in the semester they discovered male anatomy inside and female anatomy outside... and her school is in one of the most conservative towns in America!

 

[Zona Pellucida]

When I worked with cats, for some reason I did not get grossed out at all.

The only one time where I really felt grossed out was when dissecting the stomach as the smell was horrendous when I made the incision, not too mention the mushy yellow "food".

 

[mbe36]

I was interviewing at a school and a student had lacerated the cadavers lung causing all of this filmy white liquid to start pouring out. I forgot what they called it. It smelled like burnt cheese.

I once volunteered to blow up a lung in anatomy to demonstrate the inflation of the different lobes.

Well, the lung recoiled and this lovely "filmy white liquid" flew into my mouth. Good times.

 

[Dissected]

I once volunteered to blow up a lung in anatomy to demonstrate the inflation of the different lobes.

Well, the lung recoiled and this lovely "filmy white liquid" flew into my mouth. Good times.

wow..

 

[URHere]

Haha, we just used handsaws to split the skull down the middle We also took a chisel and hammer to it on multiple occasions to get at the spinal cord and eye muscles.

Haha, my finest anatomy moment was the result of disarticulating the skull with a chisel. As we were hammering along, one of the eyes dislodged, flew across the dissecting table, and came to a sickening stop against...me.

The previous day we had removed the eyes, and just placed them back in the sockets for safe keeping, so I probably should have seen it coming...

 

[Textuality]

Haha, my finest anatomy moment was the result of disarticulating the skull with a chisel. As we were hammering along, one of the eyes dislodged, flew across the dissecting table, and came to a sickening stop against...me.

The previous day we had removed the eyes, and just placed them back in the sockets for safe keeping, so I probably should have seen it coming...

Haha..nice....We never removed the eyes, just cracked open a window from the inside of the skull We did however have a nick in our very full colon early on which made the following few days not very fun. I think someone also accidentally got a bit of flying bone chip/tissue in their mouth when people were chiseling....ewwwwwwww.

I seem to remember one table losing the tip of their cadaver's uh..male genitalia...only to find that it had somehow ended up in another cadaver's abdomen..still not sure how that happened.

We've also fallen into the habit of playing music (and sometimes youtube vids) over the screens while dissecting, makes it more fun I guess, distracts from the smell. Nothing like Numa-numa song while trying to dislocate a jaw!

 

[trustd1]

ahh..I remember my first dissection experience was with a frog. when my partner and I received our frog, we both thought it looked bigger compared to the others

we soon found out why when we opened the frog up. she was loaded with eggs! it was quite a surprise

 

[ch0sen1]

WTF are you talking about - live frogs getting their heads chopped off? They were put to sleep first, yes?

?? No, the frogs were kept in the refrigerator and were kept cold, yet they were still alive. I forgot the term of keeping them very cold, however yeah they were still alive and before the TA chopped the head off of each frog, the frogs were moving around (movement was slow since they were basically freezing) and once the heads were chopped off, the TA pithed the spinal cord to avoid sudden neural responses during the dissection. Pretty neat.

And no they were not put to sleep, we used fresh biological parts to do testing on...such as the heart...it was beating for 2-3 hours even after the frogs head was chopped off, and one of the labs had to do with measuring electrogram (surface ecg) on the heart. Basically what I did was cut through the pericardium and expose the myocardium, and place surface electrodes on the heart and you can see electrogram signals on the computer. We added different drugs to the surface of the heart to see the signal change, and in the end I added whisky to it and it killed the heart

 

[trustd1]

wow, that is quite an experience

what kind of class was this? some physiology course? animal anatomy course? doesn't seem like a typical gross anatomy course since most schools use human cadavers

 

[denticus]

I bisected a human head in half with dull hand-saw...welcome to dental school.

 

[ch0sen1]

wow, that is quite an experience

what kind of class was this? some physiology course? animal anatomy course? doesn't seem like a typical gross anatomy course since most schools use human cadavers

Human physiology for engineers. Very interesting labs....

For our muscle sections, we used grass frogs (who have very strong legs for hopping), and they were a lot smaller than the bull frogs we usually used. Anyhow, we exposed the calf muscle (and the sciatic nerve actually runs through it), and so we attached a suture(string) to the bone that holds onto the calf muscle, and hooked the suture onto a force transducer to measure the force that a grass frog calf muscle (gastronemius) exerts during a jump. We stimulated the sciatic nerve which causes the calf muscle to contract, and the stronger the stimulus, the stronger the contraction, and the force transducer was hooked to the computer so you can see the force signal and measure the output force of the calf muscle for different stimuli.

 

[ch0sen1]

Welcome to biomedical engineering!! ha, but honestly I am suprised that a lot of medical students are "stunned" that in my physiology lab, we used live frogs. You biology majors are missing out, think about how fun it is to be in biomedical engineering! haha (not jk ), but the dissections are cooler since we actually apply them to something and dont just look and poke into things..

 

[trustd1]

haha. very cool! thanks for the info ch0sen1

i gotta ask my BioE friends if they gotten this kind of experience

 

[ch0sen1]

haha. very cool! thanks for the info ch0sen1

i gotta ask my BioE friends if they gotten this kind of experience

Yes, definitely a great experience.

No prob!

 

[linguini]

Welcome to biomedical engineering!! ha, but honestly I am suprised that a lot of medical students are "stunned" that in my physiology lab, we used live frogs. You biology majors are missing out, think about how fun it is to be in biomedical engineering! haha (not jk ), but the dissections are cooler since we actually apply them to something and dont just look and poke into things..

BME majors don't have all the fun! We did the same frog nerve lab in my neuro lab, but with frog heads attached. But I remember it being quite tedious and taking foreverrrr.

 

[Dissected]

For our muscle sections, we used grass frogs (who have very strong legs for hopping), and they were a lot smaller than the bull frogs we usually used. Anyhow, we exposed the calf muscle (and the sciatic nerve actually runs through it), and so we attached a suture(string) to the bone that holds onto the calf muscle, and hooked the suture onto a force transducer to measure the force that a grass frog calf muscle (gastronemius) exerts during a jump. We stimulated the sciatic nerve which causes the calf muscle to contract, and the stronger the stimulus, the stronger the contraction, and the force transducer was hooked to the computer so you can see the force signal and measure the output force of the calf muscle for different stimuli.

We did this in mamlian physiology, but I guess our professor didn't pith one of the frogs that well (even though he 'cut' the spinal cord). We had the thing hooked up to the electrode and all of a sudden we hear this "RIBBBIITT" super low pitched and drawn out, and the frog starts to hop away really slowly. Our faces were like a foot away from this thing and it scared the bejesus out of us. The electrode gets turned on by someone in the confusion, the frog leaps extra strong on his left side and ends up rolling onto his back and keeps croaking like crazy. We were all freaking out and rolling on the ground laughing and the prof scooped him up and finished the pithing job.

 

[ch0sen1]

We did this in mamlian physiology, but I guess our professor didn't pith one of the frogs that well (even though he 'cut' the spinal cord). We had the thing hooked up to the electrode and all of a sudden we hear this "RIBBBIITT" super low pitched and drawn out, and the frog starts to hop away really slowly. Our faces were like a foot away from this thing and it scared the bejesus out of us. The electrode gets turned on by someone in the confusion, the frog leaps extra strong on his left side and ends up rolling onto his back and keeps croaking like crazy. We were all freaking out and rolling on the ground laughing and the prof scooped him up and finished the pithing job.

haha that would have freaked me out.

 

[ch0sen1]

BME majors don't have all the fun! We did the same frog nerve lab in my neuro lab, but with frog heads attached. But I remember it being quite tedious and taking foreverrrr.

Ya, but we have most of it

Haha, but yeah it was quite tedious, had to make sure not to damage to vein or anything.

 

[Bacchus]

In high school we didn't have AP biology but we did have Hnrs Biology II. Part of our final project was take a frog (provided), skin and gut it, and then reconstruct its skeleton. We could use any theme we wanted or just put the frog back together. I was plain, but some students really had interesting themes.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Dissecting cadavers is one of the more miserable things I've had to endure. It's lots of work for minimal benefit. Going to the lab later to look at the stuff you cut out is pretty useful, but actually freeing up all that junk is a serious pain in the butt. Gross lab is not my friend.

 

[LizzyM]

In HS I did a gastrectomy on a fetal pig when I should have done a gastrotomy.

What can I say? It seemed easier to cut it open (gastrotomy) after I had removed it (gastrectomy). Up until that point, everything I'd learned about anatomy I'd learned from my dad; he ran a butcher shop.

 

[Dr Roboto]

Dissecting cadavers is one of the more miserable things I've had to endure. It's lots of work for minimal benefit. Going to the lab later to look at the stuff you cut out is pretty useful, but actually freeing up all that junk is a serious pain in the butt. Gross lab is not my friend.

Amen brother, Amen.

I'm glad that two out of my three labmates want to go into surgery. They seriously have too much fun dissecting.

 

[URHere]

Amen brother, Amen.

I'm glad that two out of my three labmates want to go into surgery. They seriously have too much fun dissecting.

I think our lab group was the only one where everyone loved dissecting. We used to semi-argue over who got to cut, and we always ended up with our arms draped across the standing chest fluid, the fat piles, etc.

I thought dissecting was the best part though - I hated coming back to just look at things afterwards.

 

[beyondbethany]

i have two stories from cadaver anatomy:

1. (not mine, my TA from undergrad cadaver) we had a plastic tub with previously dissected brains in it, along with some nice embalming fluid. when she went to put a brain back in the tub, it slipped and fell quite forcefully into the tub sending embalming fluid everywhere - including into her open mouth! needless to say, a lot of people were gagging.

2. i was with my lab partner on a nice saturday afternoon dissecting the anterior thigh. i had just made the comment to my friend "you know, a dull scalpel blade does a decent job of clearing this fat away." right after that, i dragged the blade over my finger, cutting into my glove and drawing blood. this was made more disgusting by the fact that our cadaver died of sepsis. but i'm still here so...

 

[ch0sen1]

this was made more disgusting by the fact that our cadaver died of sepsis. But i'm still here so...

lol

 

[Textuality]

I think our lab group was the only one where everyone loved dissecting. We used to semi-argue over who got to cut, and we always ended up with our arms draped across the standing chest fluid, the fat piles, etc.

I thought dissecting was the best part though - I hated coming back to just look at things afterwards.

Heh, we only have 4 people per body, so everyone is assigned a quadrant and we all dissect in every lab....whether you're excited to or not. I had to do some of the dissections solo because working on the eyes and such made some of my lab mates kind of queasy. It wasn't a big deal, but I did get kind of lonely chipping away at the orbit all on my lonesome..

 

[DrMcGangsterMD]

Nothing extraordinary, but dead baby pigs in Bio made me bloodthirsty. My teacher and I didn't get along that well prior to this particular lab, but when I stayed after to play with the guts (we were only supposed to expose the heart, etc.) we bonded over the thoracic cavity.

 

[hedgehog1]

While bisecting a human pelvis with an electric saw, the un-voided fecal matter sprayed onto everyone's face... Fun day, haha