Writer-in-Training
University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine
Currently an M2 at University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine. Interests include global health, health disparities, and emergency medicine. Also enjoys photography, classical music, travel, and medical history. Will work for dessert.
“This is a place where the dead are pleased to help the living.”
These words always greet me upon entering our anatomy lab. A similar saying in Latin is inscribed at the Palazzo del Bo at the University of Padua, home of the world’s oldest anatomical theater.
The other day, while scouring my computer for a lost document, I stumbled upon a speech I had given for my medical school’s anatomy donor recognition ceremony. It was an event held every fall, right after anatomy, during which our school’s first-year students showed their appreciation to the friends and families whose loved ones donated their bodies to science so that we could better learn the anatomy of the body. It has been a couple years since, so I decided to take another look at it.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
I do not want to do this to you / My heart wrenches / For the pain we inflict
When I started neuroanatomy, I was fascinated by the brain. However, I found it difficult to keep track of the where structures were spatially when there were so many different ways to dissect it. To help myself study, I drew a coronal section alongside an intact hemisphere so I could better appreciate the structures in relationship to one another. When I spend any amount of time creating a piece of artwork, I retain it much more quickly, as if my hands are translating it into my memory.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
The idea for this piece came to me in the last few weeks of my first-year anatomy class. I wanted to create a work for my school’s annual Service of Gratitude, where the class commemorates those individuals who donated their bodies for our education. I won’t say too much about the piece, as I’d like to allow the viewer his or her own experience. I will just say that learning about the human body for the first time through gross “sections,” radiographic “slices” and illustrated muscle groups in various atlases came with a bizarre, inhuman — or inhumane, even — feeling to it. I could not stop thinking about how learning the human body meant that I had to study it in its most mutilated forms. It was just too ironic.
Cadaver. The word itself seems devoid of life. And, so too does the white plastic bag lying unceremoniously before me. It’s the first day of anatomy, and I unzip the tarp and stare down at a wet, grey lump of clay. There it is. There is what, exactly? What was I expecting? Some warm human soul, freshly sprung from the loins of life? No. That’s not this. The essence of life is gone — absolutely, irrevocably, unquestionably, gone.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
My cadaver has pink fingernails. I saw them on the first day of class, after we pulled back the white plastic sheet with the number “22” scrawled on it with permanent marker, and cut away the damp cloth that had been covering her cold skin. Her arms were folded across her chest, and on her fingers was a sparkly, ballet-pink polish, not chipped or peeling despite having been there for the 13 months since she’d died. I don’t know why it’s there. I don’t know if she painted them thinking she was going to survive to enjoy it, or if she was someone who always wanted to look her best, even in death.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
At Albany Medical College, upon our orientation to gross anatomy, we are asked to draw our feelings on blank index cards prior to entering the cadaver laboratory. As we progress through the year, our sentiments regarding anatomy may remain the same, or may change, and these drawings allow us to look back at this milestone we crossed as budding medical students.
Medical Student Editor and in-Training Staff Member Emeritus
University of Florida Fixel Movement and Neurorestoration Institute
Nita Chen is a current movement disorders fellow at University of Florida Movement and Neurorestoration program. She is Class of 2017 medical student at Albany Medical College. To become cultural, she spent her early educational years in Taiwan and thoroughly enjoyed wonderful Taiwanese food and milk tea, thus ruining her appetite for the rest of her life in the United States. Aside from her neuroscience and cognitive science majors during her undergraduate career, she holed herself up in her room writing silly fictional stories, doodling, and playing the piano. Or she could be found spazzing out like a gigantic science nerd in various laboratories. Now she just holes up in her room to study most of the time.
