What was it like to witness a dissection of a human body in the early 20th century? The following article details a reporter’s look inside a dissection room in 1902.
In the Dissecting Rooms
As it becomes the privilege of comparatively few to spend a few hours in the dissecting rooms of a great medical institution during the process of systematically carving a human body into fragments, we shall endeavor entertainingly to relate our experience of one night with the dissectors. For the sake of clearness and force we shall, in imagination, repeat the experience and writing in the present. We will not wear our best clothes into the dissecting rooms the reasons for which will appear by and by.
It is one of those pleasant, inspiring autumn evenings in the breath of which, like fruit, our ideas seem to ripen and fall sweetly into our meditation. The city spires are glinting in the light of a bright half moon, and a mellow wind is playing with the dead leaves upon the lawn. We are standing on a suburban street corner, waiting for the trolley car that will bear us nearly to our destination.. Notwithstanding the sedative character of the evening, the prospects of coming into the presence of the dead has stimulated our nerves a little. But here comes the car and now we are gliding along a brilliantly illuminated avenue. Now we are in the heart and din of the city, but we pass on and soon find ourselves walking along a dimly lit side street in a remote part.
We come at last to a large, unattractive three-story building lit only on the second floor. We step cautiously into the dark corridor below, and as we do so, a wandering gust of wind from the second floor wafts an uncanny odor to our nostrils. We soon find ourselves climbing a stairway dimly lit by a gas jet from an upper hallway along which we proceed to a doorway from which come light and the buzz of human voices. The scene that confronts us as we come to this doorway causes us to suddenly stop and struggle briefly with a feeling of horror, the expression of which would place us in a ridiculous position before the score of medical students and two doctors that are so absorbed in their ghastly, but legitimate work that they fail to notice us for a while.
We are however duly noticed and very courteously invited by one of the doctors to step in and make ourselves easy.
A strange, nauseous smell and the proximity of a headless, disemboweled human body causes us to accept the invitation with reluctance. We edge ourselves shyly around the cold, stiff feet of the dead and find ourselves striving inwardly to maintain proper composure in the presence of all the horrors of a dissecting room.
Close to our left upon a table lies the corpse of a large, strong man. Stray locks of his long, wavy, black hair are strewn promiscuously over his broad, high forehead upon which the blue veins stand still and cold. A mouth strongly indicative of decision and will is partially hidden by a long, black mustache.
The outlines of a marvelous physical beauty are deeply impressed upon the beholder in spite of the fact that four heartless students are busily engaged in removing the skin from the brawny breast and strong limbs in order to examine the beautiful muscular development beneath. How tragic it is to climb to the sunny summit of physical beauty and health and there meet grinning Death!
We now turn our attention to another table and meet a sight too hideous for description. It is the dead body of a man completely flayed and the anterior walls of the abdomen and chest removed so as to expose to view the entrails, lungs, and heart. Some students are bent over him, diligently searching for that notorious little vermiform appendix, which causes so much trouble in the human organism and so many surgical operations.
Here too we become interested and pressed up close around the students to get a view of this famous little nuisance of the human body. In our eagerness we brush against the clammy limbs of the corpse and shyly inspect our clothes as we step back, but at this juncture our timidity is somewhat dissipated by the amazing indifference of one of the students who cooly leans forward, strikes a match upon the dry, pink skull of the dead and calmly lights a cigarette, flirts a fragment of human flesh that has clung to the back of his hand into the sawdust with which the floor is strewn, props his book up against head of the corpse, and again sinks into a deep study over the anatomy of his dead human brother.
On the next table is the corpse of a very large man lying face downward. The students are removing the skin from the back and cutting out the muscles of that region. One of the doctors is standing by conducting a quiz – questioning in turn each student in regard to the names of the different muscles, etc., occasionally stepping back to illustrate by diagram on a blackboard.
Few there are who have not looked on the face of the dead; ay, few there are who have not witnessed the blighting touch of the dread monster upon the bright face of a friend or relative and felt that awful desolation creep into the bosom as the glow of life departed and left them alone with the deserted earthly habitation of a loved one. We close the lids tenderly that we may not see the awful vacancy within, and then imagine the beloved one sleeping.
But we must dismiss these tender thoughts and sympathies or we may not be able to watch the scene before us, for we have turned and are gazing down upon the skinless, headless, disemboweled body previously mentioned. A lone student is intensely occupied in dissecting the muscles of the thigh. His arms are bared and smeared with blood and grease.
As we watch him a hideous maggot is seen wriggling about in the path of the dissecting knife. The student laughingly picks it up and sportively cooks it in the gas flame, then proceeds again with his work.
“Stand aside please, let me get to the open window, for my stomach is a trifle squeamish. Ah, that breeze is so sweet albeit, it has been among the slums.”
Well, the students are “blanketing the stiffs” and preparing to leave the rooms and don’t you fool, we are not going to linger behind. We have been well paid for our visit, but exceedingly glad to get out in the fresh air again.
Source: Audubon County journal. (Exira, Iowa), 27 Nov. 1902.
