Human Anatomy

While in Fairbanks with my cousin Chris last week, I got to spend some time in the classroom where he teaches Human Anatomy.

The room had all kinds of plastic models of just about every part of the body you can think of. He went over most of them, telling me all the parts and how the work together. My favorite was a torso that could either be male or female, depending on what parts were attached to it. That day it happened to be female.

I finally got to see how it was possible to have 32 feet of intestines crammed into one’s body cavity!

Also in the room were actual skeletons, both human and animal (mostly cats). Chris showed me a man in a cabinet that was of Asian descent: he was put together in such a way as to be movable, so you could see how the joints work and how everything fits together. He was quite short, actually – possibly 5’-6” or so, as compared to my 6’-0” height. Another human skeleton was kept in a box, unassembled – thereby giving students a chance to attempt to put one together themselves.

One of the major highlights of my visit to the anatomy lab was to hold a human brain in my hands! Gloved, of course (me, not the brain). The chemicals used to preserve human tissue are not something you really want to soak in. The brain was surprisingly heavy for its size, I thought. Chris pointed out all the pieces/parts to it, and talked of how it functions.

The other highlight of my visit was the chance to look thru the microscopes. I had never done that before, and I must say it takes some skill. You can’t just look and see things easily. You have to adjust your vision in some strange way that can’t be explained – you just have to figure it out on your own.

When I finally “got it” it almost felt like I had flipped a switch in my head. I was able to go from looking in the scope to looking up at Chris with relative ease - after a bit of practice, that is.

The slides were arranged in boxes so you could pick and choose what you wanted to see. I looked at bone slivers, muscle tissue samples, amphibious skin samples… all kinds on cool stuff. I even got to see blood cells and cells that were dividing and multiplying. While I was looking at the premade slides, Chris got some pond water out and prepared a few slides so I could see the bugs living there – they were actually quite cute!

When we got back to Chris’s cabin for the night, he loanded me a book to read called “Stiff” by Mary Roach. This is a book that is readily available at most any bookstore, and is about “The Curios Lives of Human Cadavers.” He thought that since I had such a good time in the anatomy lab, I might enjoy reading it – and I totally am!

However - while this book is, without doubt, a very interesting and well-written book, I must admit that I cannot advise reading it while trying to eat lunch!

Especially if you’re eating brown rice, black beans, and scrambled eggs over crisp corn tortilla’s while reading about surgeons practicing their plastic surgery techniques on severed heads at a facial anatomy refresher course.

I may never eat at that restaurant again.