Dissection

8 Key excerpts on "Dissection"

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  Purity and Pollution

  Gender, Embodiment and Victorian Medicine

  • A. Bashford(Author)
  • 1998(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Far from being an intellectual procedur e, Dissection involved the body of the dissector as much as the corpse. Dissection was aboUl two bodies, not one - and two sexed bodies at that. Di.uecring rhe Feminine 111 Over the nineteenth century, such 'gross' anatomy was refined and augmented by knowledges produced by more sophisticated technolo- gies such as the microscope and by laboratory sciences. 7 Dissectionl anatomy came to be less a high-status specialty than a grounding knowledge, a practice associated particularly with students and with medical education. One anatomist described his work in very mun- dane terms: While the anatomist limits hirnself to describing the form and position of organs as they appear exposed, layer after layer, by his dissecting instruments, he does not pretend to soar any higher in the region of science than the humble level of other mechanical arts, which merely appreciate the fitting arrangement of things relative to one another and combinative for the particular design of the form, of whatever species this may be, whether organic or inorganic - a man or a machine. 8 Such anatomical Dissection was distinct from an autopsy or post- mortem, which was undertaken by qualified surgeons and physicians usually within a hospital setting, rat her than at a medical school or university. Dissection assumed its meaning within a pedagogical con- text. Whereas Dissection aimed to educate in nonnal human anatomy , the post mortem aimed to reveal knowledge about a body in some way abnormal, siek, diseased. It is telling of nineteenth-century con- ceptualisations of sexed bodies that Dissection almost always involved the male body (that is, the normal or standard human body) while autopsies often involved the female body (the pathologised, abnormal body). In large part, tracing changing cultural attitudes toward Dissection is about tracing changing imaginings of the body.

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  Thieme Dissector Volume 1

  Upper Limb and Thorax

  • Vishram Singh, G. P. Pal, S. D. Gangane(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Thieme

    (Publisher)

  xix Introduction to Dissection Anatomy is one of the basic subjects in medical education. It deals with the structure of human body. A sound knowledge of this subject provides better understanding of the clinical subjects. The subject of anatomy is best studied by Dissection. It will be appropriate to say that Dissection forms an integral part of teaching or learning anatomy. It gives you an opportunity to explore, observe, and learn about structures/organs. The experience that you gain in the Dissection room is unmatched. It cannot be compared to learning through books, illustrations, CDs, and DVDs that are available to learn the subject. Dissecting a cadaver improves your skill of handling the tissues and instruments that you will be trying later when you start practicing on living subjects. It gives you an understanding about the relationship of various structures to each other and helps you know what is normal and what is anomalous. It offers an anatomical basis of tests that you may do, various signs and symptoms that you encounter in a patient, variations that you may see in some subjects, and overall better understanding of many disease processes. It is well said that the cadaver is the best teacher of anatomy. Once it is accepted, it is our duty to treat the cadaver with the same respect and dignity which is offered to a living patient. Preservation of the Cadavers It is done by embalming the cadaver with the embalming fluid which contains a strong fixative. Subsequently, the cadaver is submersed in the preservative fluid. When the cadaver is partly dis- sected, proper care should be taken by wrapping it so that it is kept moist, or else the cadaver will desiccate and once the part is dry it cannot be restored. Therefore, expose only the part which is to be dissected. Ideally, all the parts of the body should be periodically inspected and moistened during the dissecting session.

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  An Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine

  • Claude Bernard(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Dover Publications

    (Publisher)

  The scientific principle of vivisection is easy, moreover, to grasp. It is always a question of separating or altering certain parts of the living machine, so as to study them and thus to decide how they function and for what. Vivisection, considered as an analytic method of investigation of the living, includes many successive steps, for we may need to act either on organic apparatus, or on organs, or on tissue, or on the histological units themselves. In extemporized and other vivisections, we produce mutilations whose results we study by preserving the animals. At other times, vivisection is only an autopsy on the living, or a study of properties of tissues immediately after death. The various processes of analytic study of the mechanisms of life in living animals are indispensable, as we shall see, to physiology, to pathology and to therapeutics. However, it would not do to believe that vivisection in itself can constitute the whole experimental method as applied to the study of vital phenomena. Vivisection is only anatomical Dissection of the living; it is necessarily combined with all the other physico-chemical means of investigation which must be carried into the organism. Reduced to itself, vivisection would have only a limited range and in certain cases must even mislead us as to the actual role of organs. By these reservations I do not deny the usefulness or even the necessity of vivisection in the study of vital phenomena. I merely declare it insufficient. Our instruments for vivisection are indeed so coarse and our senses so imperfect that we can reach only the coarse and complex parts of an organism. Vivisection under the microscope would make much finer analysis possible, but it presents much greater difficulties and is applicable only to very small animals.

  But when we reach the limits of vivisection we have other means of going deeper and dealing with the elementary parts of organisms where the elementary properties of vital phenomena have their seat. We may introduce poisons into the circulation, which carry their specific action to one or another histological unit. Localized poisonings, as Fontana and J. Müller have already used them, are valuable means of physiological analysis. Poisons are veritable reagents of life, extremely delicate instruments which dissect vital units. I believe myself the first to consider the study of poisons from this point of view, for I am of the opinion that studious attention to agents which alter histological units should form the common foundation of general physiology, pathology and therapeutics. We must always, indeed, go back to the organs to find the simplest explanations of life.

  To sum up, Dissection is a displacing of a living organism by means of instruments and methods capable of isolating its different parts. It is easy to understand that such Dissection of the living presupposes Dissection of the dead.

  IV. NORMAL ANATOMY IN ITS RELATIONS WITH VIVISECTION

  Anatomy is the basis necessary to all medical investigation, whether theoretical or practical. A corpse is an organism deprived of living motion, and the earliest explanation of vital phenomena was naturally sought in dead organs, just as we seek explanation of the action of a machine in motion by studying the parts of the machine at rest. It seems, therefore, that the anatomy of man ought to be the basis of physiology and human medicine. Prejudice, however, opposed Dissection of corpses, and in default of the human body, men dissected corpses of animals, in organization as close as possible to man. Thus Galen’s anatomy and physiology were done mainly on monkeys. At the same time, Galen also performed Dissections of cadavers and experiments on living animals, thus proving that he understood perfectly that Dissection of cadavers is significant only in so far as it is compared with Dissection of living bodies. In this way, anatomy is indeed only the first step in physiology. Anatomy in itself is a sterile science; its existence is justified only by the presence of living men and animals, well and sick, and by its own possible usefulness to physiology and pathology.

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  Bodies in Formation

  An Ethnography of Anatomy and Surgery Education

  • Rachel Prentice(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Duke University Press Books

    (Publisher)

  Further, various practices for working with cadavers reflect di√erent assumptions about bodies coming from diverse areas within medical work with unique meth-ods that physicians use for investigating bodies. The debate reveals a tension between Dissection, as an iconic cultural practice through which many of medicine’s a√ective, relational, and physical lessons come into play, and anatomy learning, as the cognitive acquisition of names and the under-standing of spatial relations. Declining Sciences and New Technologies As I discussed in the previous chapter, most ethnographies of anatomy education were written by sociologists who spent time in medical schools in the 1950s and again in the 1970s and 1980s (Becker et al. 1961; Fox 1988; Ha√erty 1988, 1991; Segal 1988). These ethnographies typically consider the emotional socialization of medical students, focusing on uncertainty (Fox CUTTING Dissection 71 1988), group work (Becker et al. 1961), and students’ explorations of death (Ha√erty 1991). In these works, the emotional work of Dissection received more attention than the relation of technical practices to the process of cultivating medical students. The lessons embodied through touch, for ex-ample, have received scant attention. More recently, science studies scholars have explored relationships between the construction of scientific objects and the construction of scientists themselves (Gusterson 1996; Keller 1984; Knorr Cetina 2000; Turkle 1995). Dissection is an example of the mutual articulation of object and subject: students articulate anatomical structures so they can become articulate in the language of medicine. The availability of digital teaching tools has not been the primary driver behind the decline in Dissection. Other factors, such as anatomy’s decline as a research science, the loss of qualified anatomy teachers, and the expense of maintaining body-donation programs, have been more significant.

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  Introduction to Anatomy

  • Krunal Bhatt, Dipak Gunvanta Ingole, Krunal Bhatt, Dipak Gunvanta Ingole(Authors)
  • 2023(Publication Date)
  • Delve Publishing

    (Publisher)

  While on the one hand, microscopic anatomy is concerned with the study of structural units tiny enough to be seen only with a light microscope, gross anatomy is concerned with the study of bodily components large enough to be studied without the need of magnifying devices. All anatomical research requires Dissection. The Greeks were the first to employ Dissection, and Theophrastus dubbed it “anatomy,” from ana temnein, which means “to cut apart.” The field’s other major subsection, comparative anatomy , evaluates similar body structures in different species of animals in order to comprehend the adaptive changes that have occurred through time. Anatomy is a field of biology concerned with the description of bodily structures revealed through Dissection in various living organisms. The word anatomy comes from the Greek word “anatom,” which means “cutting” and “ana” means “up.” Anatomy was first taught by dissecting corpses, hence the name “anatomy.” When studying about the body and how it operates, quite frequently the phrase “anatomy” is coined. But what exactly is anatomy? What does anatomy mean, how would one define anatomy? Well, anatomy is a biological field of science that deals with the structure and identification of organisms’ bodies and their many divisions. Though the term “anatomy of the body” is commonly used in reference to humans and human body parts, it actually refers to all living organisms. Gross or macroscopic anatomy and microscopic anatomy are the two divisions of this study of body structure. Between 1500 and 1850, this ancient discipline reached its pinnacle, with its subject matter solidly established. None of the world’s ancient An Overview of Anatomy 3 civilizations dissected a human body, which most people linked with the spirit of the departed soul and revered with superstitious awe.

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  Rhetoric in the Flesh

  Trained Vision, Technical Expertise, and the Gross Anatomy Lab

  • T. Kenny Fountain(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Students in the Dissection course and TAs in the prosection course describe this mutual relationship of revealing and learning as being “lost” in the body. First, they get lost in the sense of having lost their way and feeling confused about how, what, and where to cut. Second, they lose themselves by becoming intellectually absorbed in the process of dissecting. In the first case, the losing of one’s way, participants rely on instructors, TAs, or students to step in and begin identification, for example by calling out structures as a wayfinding aid. This collaborative element of Dissection, working in teams to find and identify structures, supplements the use of multimodal displays when the cadaver’s physical body resists a simple rendering or when there is little resemblance between the body and the display. As the course instructor makes plain, both cases common:

  [The structure in the cadaveric body] often looks nothing like it does in Netter. Netter is not that helpful then. It is a nice conceptual idea, but once you get in there [in the cadaver] it looks nothing like it. So you have to rely on your anatomical knowledge or someone else in the room. (Kyle, instructor of Dissection course)

  Dissecting is a process of learning to reveal that simultaneously allows participants to create the anatomical body by learning to recognize it in the unruly flesh of the cadaver.

  In the second meaning of getting “lost,” participants are lost in the revealing to learn component of Dissection, due to the intense concentration and deliberate actions dissecting requires. They need to find and identify structures in question and continue to dissect and, in a sense, perfect the cadaveric body to make those structures clear and obvious to anyone who views them. They become intellectually absorbed in their work, lost in the body, because making a structure clear and visible requires minute, detailed operations. While at times tedious, this work can be, for all participants, enjoyable. They develop manual skills and anatomical knowledge as they cut and recognize what they see, in the process gaining greater appreciation of the body’s complexity and the elegance of its physiology and relational evidence. The work of making and making clear the anatomical body for oneself connects gross anatomy students and TAs to the centuries-old practices of anatomical display. Making cadavers into idealized 3-D displays offers them the pleasures of Dissection and encourages in them an appreciation of the well-dissected body.

  The Aesthetics of Anatomical Dissection

  Dissection is a process that makes anatomical bodies out of cadaveric one, under-stood as beautiful according to the trained vision of participants. Though not attractive in a conventional sense, participants describe dissected bodies and the processes of learning to reveal and revealing to learn in aesthetic terms. This anatomical-aesthetic sensibility is a consequence of their budding anatomical vision, the use of Netter as a model, the finished product, the process of discovery, and the experience of working closely on the body. As a product, the beautiful cadaver is made Netter

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  Body Parts and Bodies Whole

  • Marie L. S. Sorensen, Jessica Hughes, Katharina Rebay-Salisbury, Marie Louise Stig Sorensen, Celine Hughes(Authors)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Oxbow Books

    (Publisher)

  The archaeological evidence for autopsy Although there is a degree of overlap between autopsy and Dissection, there are significant differences of the degree of fragmentation of the body and reasons for performing the two procedures, although both challenged the integrity of the body. The main function of autopsy was to establish cause of death, initially only in suspicious circumstances, later to elucidate pathological processes and the effi cacy of medical intervention. Autopsies were usually less invasive and destructive than Dissection, with investigations confined to soft tissues and often restricted to parts of the body thought to be linked to the cause of death with fragmentation of the skeleton unusual (Harley 1994: 5). At its most comprehensive intervention was usually Annia Cherryson 136 limited to the abdominal and thoracic cavities and the brain, with none of the stripping and disarticulation of the bones characteristic of Dissection. In contrast, Dissection examined the structure of the body, usually for pedagogical and research purposes. By its very nature the process was more invasive than most autopsies, with all parts of the body potentially subject to investigation. Moreover, the diffi culties often encountered in obtaining cadavers for Dissection necessitated the use of every part of the body. Roberts, writing in 1843, stated that there was “little left but a series of disconnected bones denuded of flesh” once the anatomists had finished with a body, leaving little but fragments to be interred (1843: 9).

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  Ritual, Belief and the Dead in Early Modern Britain and Ireland

  • Sarah Tarlow(Author)
  • 2010(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  Anatomy Cuts Free of Moral Philosophy: Into Modernity Although the terms ‘autopsy’, ‘Dissection’ and ‘post-mortem’ are often used inter- changeably, they have slightly different meanings. A Dissection is cutting open an organism to examine the inner parts. The aims of Dissection are division, minute examination and analysis. It is both a research and a pedagogical process. 78 Scientific Belief Post-mortem examinations are all enquiries carried out after a death, usually with a judicial or medical purpose, and may include autopsy. A coroner’s inquest, for example, may hold a post-mortem enquiry which would consider the results of the autopsy alongside other relevant information to establish the cause of death. An autopsy is literally a ‘seeing for oneself ’, intended to discover the cause of death. It is not necessarily educational, and certainly not necessarily public, but it is medical and may be of judicial significance too. An autopsy might also be carried out by a doctor as the final part of the care of his (private) patient. Autopsies appear to have been more acceptable among the upper classes than they were in the rest of society, possibly because levels of scientific education were such that they were better able to appreciate the possible benefits to medical science. Autopsies on the rich were performed by the family doctor – a known and trusted individual. It is nevertheless noticeable that, according to archaeological evidence, autopsies were more frequently carried out on the bodies of men than women. Around 80% of craniotomies on the bodies of securely sexed adults were on male skulls (Cherryson, Crossland and Tarlow, forthcoming). Autopsies, however, were not only carried out on the rich. The archaeologically known burial place with the highest proportion of craniotomised skulls is the hospital burial ground of Newcastle Infirmary.

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