PRIYA SHARMA A medical student lights a candle in honor of a person who donated their body to the UCLA School of Medicine through the Willed Body program.
By Benjamin Parke
Daily Bruin Contributor
About two dozen cadavers will receive thank you notes from the medical students who dissected them.
The messages, which were written Tuesday evening in a ceremony organized by the School of Medicine’s Class of 2004, will be cremated alongside the corpses of participants in UCLA’s Willed Body Program.
In what was called “A Celebration of Remembrance and Gratitude,” medical students wrote personal messages to and lit candles for the people who donated their bodies to the school. Some students became visibly emotional as they spoke before their peers to say how much they appreciated the gift.voice quiverring, eyes teary
“You gave us one of your most precisous objects – the human body,” said Evon Walks, addressing the donor whose corpse she dissected. “I can only imagine the selflessness with which you lived your life.”
All of the students had to go through what can be an ordeal known as Gross Anatomy during their first year at medical school.
“It’s kind of like a rite of passage,” said Sarah Kennedy, a student who helped coordinate the ceremony.
She said it was hard making that initial incision into the cadaver, but soon she was able to focus on her work.
“Basically, I hadn’t seen anybody dead in my life,” Kennedy said.
Some students have particular trouble when it comes to dissecting the hands and head, she added explain why.
Although students have no idea of the background of the person whose corpse they’re dissecting, they can learn little things about the individual.
“Some still have nail polish on so that’s like, whoah!” Kennedy said. “To see that – it’s kind of like a vestige of that person.”
Doctor Carmine Clemente who came to the medical school in 1951 as an instructor, and later headed the Anatomy Department, spoke to the students and told them how comparatively priviledged they are.
“The history of human dissection has been fraught with difficulty,” said Clemente.
What was long a social taboo over the practice caused the Greek physician Galen to resort to dissecting a Barbary Ape. When Galen used the examinations to infer things about human anatomy, however, a few errors arose, Clemente said.
“He described the foot as having an opposable toe, which is not the case,” he said.
Laws against human dissection were still in place in the United States and Britain during the early 1800’s, Clemente said. An underground industry sprung up to meet medical schools’ demands for bodies, with graverobbers known as “resurrectionists.”
Clemente related the story of William Hare and his wife, who ran a hotel in Edinburgh, Scotland.
After a lodger passed away, the couple discovered that a professor at the University of Edinburgh medical school would pay 7 pounds, 10 shillings for the corpse – more than recouping the money owed to them by the expired roomer.
With the help of a friend, William Burke, Hare turned the incident into a regular operation – luring aging customers to the hotel, getting them drunk and suffocating them.
“What was unfortunate was that the professor and his assistants never asked where the bodies came from,” Clemente said.
The scheme began to unravel when medical students recognized the corpse they were about to dissect as that of a local prostitute. Burke was hanged and Hare given immunity for his testimony.
When UCLA’s medical school opened, anatomical material was regulated by a state board, and there was never quite enough of it, Clemente said. The bodies schools in the state received came from indigent people without relatives.
In 1950, Horace W. Magoun, the first anatomy professor at UCLA, wrote about the situation in a two-paragraph editorial that appeared in the Daily Bruin. It was seen by the Los Angeles Examiner, which wrote further on the subject. Later that year Magoun was in discusions with the state legislature, Clemente said.
UCLA was allowed to establish its Willed Body Program, which “was the leading light throughout the world,” he added. The ceremony for the cadavers began in 1996.
Kwame Donkor, a student originally from Ghana, said the ceremony was very meaningful.
As time went on, students became attached to their cadavers.
“It’s like something that’s a part of you being taken away,” Donkor added.
He was also appreciative of the anonymous donor of the body.
“The reason why they donated their bodies was so we could become knowledgeable,” Donkor said. “So we took advantage of that.”