i have posted a lot of blogs regarding my days as a surgeon-but meeting up with an old classmate of mbbs days brought back a lot of memories of undergraduate days in kasturba medical college manipal-even in 1970-a truly international town-a batch of 200 students-with malaysians-chinese-south africans-ugandans-white americans-and brown americans.
                       apart from the culture shock facing a small town indian-the dose of reality facing any new entrant to medicine,was the anatomy dissection hall-all of us had visions of a glamorous career as angels of mercy-brought down to reality-with our first exposure to anatomy dissection.
                         the first day in the anatomy hall-200 nervous students-assembling together-12 to a steel table-3 each to each limb-with scalpel ,forceps and the bible of anatomy dissection-the cunningham manuals of anatomy-but no one had warned us of the ultimate reality-burly attendants come and opening uphuge steel tanks by the side-would heave out bodies kept in formalin-and put them on the dissecting tables.accustomed to some frog dissections etc-this was a revelation-an emaciated human being, his face fixed in the rictus of death-his muscles wasted-even in death protesting the unfairness of life-these were all destitutes who had no chance in life-no choice regarding death-and suffering the ultimate indignity of being desecrated by a bunch of teenagers
let us face it-joining medicine at the age of 16-17-the required maturity to deal with certain issues was lacking.
                        anatomy dissection hall  is probably a warning to people who join medicine with unrealistic expectations-that life is not very simple-the worst experience is the stench of formalin-it seems to pervade every pore of your body-for a number of days one could not eat-because like  lady macbeths attempt to wash off the blood stains from her hand-the stench of formalin could not be washed off.
                               there are extreme reactions to the exposure to anatomy-some students take a deep breath-decide to  concentrate on dissections-while the other group go overboard-decide to hide their revulsion under a mask of flippancy.
                  i would like to narrate a few tales about both categories of medical students.
i was one of the lot who decided that anatomy is a necessary evil to be tolerated-and was very meticulous about each set of dissection-dissecting meticulously-and giving exams after each dissection schedule-only to misjudge my two partners in the limb dissection-who one fine day decided that my slow approach to limb dissection was not to be endured-and cut off the limb before i came to the dissection hall.
                         the late 1960s and early 1970s-were the times of student rebellion-miniskirts etc-the next dissection table to ours was a table of girls-all in miniskirts-and one of them was truly delectable-all curves-long legs-and in short skirts at that-we had in our table an irrepresible characterwho would drop his dissection instruments once in five minutes and reaching down would try to look at forbidden areas-this long limbed female having tolerated these sly attempts at voyeourism for a long time, gave my friend a tongue lashing.
                             the comeback by my irrereverent friend was memorable-this statuesque girl had a routine-immeadiately after the dissection she would be the first to get up -walk to the sink wash her hands put her hand into her apron -pull out her her kerchief-dry her hands and then walk off-and such was her aura that the whole batch would watch this performance.
                           this particular day-the last day of anatomy dissection was different-our friend had warned us that something strange would happen-the class beauty as usual got up first from the dissection table-with everyone watching her swayed her way to the sink, washed her hands meticulously-reached into her apron pocket for a kercheief and came out with a a dried shrivelled cadaveric penis-planted there by my friend-juvenile prank-
but we where all 16-17 at that time! Close