283 Cadavers Teachings (1/2)

At any period of time, bodies that could be used for dissection were extremely scarce.

However, dissecting a body was very important to surgeons, especially during the early periods of surgery development. Most surgeons were criminals who stole corpses at that time. One of the most famous perpetrator at that time was the father of anatomy, Andreas Vesalius, who started out dissecting animals. Later on, he went to mass graves to steal corpses, before moving on to the corpses of criminals who were hanged, because they were fresh.

Not long after, when the sextons noticed what Andreas was doing, his cellar was already filled with bloody human brains, hearts, livers, spleens, limbs, and other body parts.

Later, Andreas, who got out of jail through bribery, wrote a book titled [De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem] [1]. He corrected more than three hundred errors made by Galen, who had been the person of authority at that time when it came to the human body.

The former anatomical authority Gallen did not have any corpses to dissect. So, Galen dissected monkeys to get the information.

Given that surgeons at that time operated on humans under Gallen's theory, it could be said that surgery was the most obvious example of how much power the mind had over matter, and how easily man created new truths to believe in with each passing day.

A lot of people could have survived if the doctors had dissected corpses at that time.

Four or five hundred years had passed, and the supply of corpses in the twenty-first century was still insufficient.

For example, almost none of the medical students from China could dissect a body alone or participate in the dissection of various body parts. If they could do it once, they were already considered to have studied in a rather decent medical school, and the students would also have to be active in class to be able to dissect a corpse.

On average, only one in every ten clinicians in China could dissect one corpse throughout their career.

It was not just medical students, even doctors did not have bodies to dissect.

Most medical students had no chance of dissecting bodies once they got a position in a hospital.

This was just like how difficult it would be for a mechanic to repair a car if he were to only be able to disassemble one-tenth of a car in his life while he was only able to only watch others disassemble cars for his entire life.

Many doctors wanted to change the current situation. A good example was Huashan Hospital's orthopedic anatomy class, which started in 2004. Without any publicity, they quickly expanded the class size from two classes to more than twenty classes. All the trainees were mature orthopedists who were trained in hospitals all over the country.

The reason why they were willing to go all the way to Huashan Hospital for retraining was that it was difficult for them to get cadavers suitable for dissection in their own hospitals.

For example, even though Yun Hua Hospital was the top hospital in the region, they did not have their own anatomy training, which was one of the things that differentiated between top hospitals in a region and top hospitals in China.

Sometimes, a corpse was more useful for a surgeon to understand the human body than a surgeon performing one hundred surgeries.

In the face of the cadaver sent by Tian Qi, not only Ling Ran, but Yu Yuan, too, no longer harbored any thoughts of being conflicted at the door.

After receiving confirmation from the Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center, the two of them escorted the cadaver to the basement by its sides. They carefully put the cadaver on the dissecting table and brightened the light. Then, they took a deep breath.

Yes, this was the scent.

The dissection room built by the Orthopedic and Sports Medicine Center now seemed to have been promoted to become a real dissection room, because a dissection room would only look like one when there were corpses in it.

Fortunately, Tian Qi was smart. She did not go down the stairs at all. Instead, she left long ago to go shopping at the mall.

It did not matter which mall!

Whatever she bought did not matter!

As long as there were a lot of people!

Going to the hospital by trailing after the car with the cadaver at night was already Tian Qi's limit. She could not bear with it anymore.

Ling Ran and Yu Yuan were on cloud nine.

They walked around the cadaver three rounds while they thought about the plan of how they should dissect it in their heads.

As the saying went, ”Those who were young did not know how valuable corpses were.” If there were cadavers while they received training in medical schools, as long as the student was shameless, was more hardworking, and looked more attractive, that student will always get a chance to practice.

Once they entered hospitals, clinicians would need to rely on pure luck if they ever wanted to train on cadavers. Ling Ran had better luck. Just as he started his internship, he received three thousand dissection experiences on upper limbs. As for Yu Yuan, it had been a long time since she saw a cadaver. After she put on her gloves, she could not help but tottered over before she touched the cadaver.

In a flash, Yu Yuan could not help but laughed.

The light flickered in the basement while it was dark at night. Her laughter was shrill and loud.

*Knock, knock.*

*Knock, knock.*