2008 Woodie Awards
Mortuary science students learn anatomy, respect working with cadavers
The cost of receiving each cadaver is $2,000
By Jonathan Munson
Last update: 5/17/06 at 8:20 AM CST
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"Is it true or actually myth that your hair keeps growing after death?" Victoria Esquivel asked mortuary science Professor Felix Gonzales as he entered the human anatomy lab in Room 121 of Nail Technical Center.
Esquivel and Saul Gonzales, both mortuary science sophomores, hoped to resolve a disagreement - literally over someone's dead body.
Embalming fluid dripped from the nostrils of two cadavers as the students worked in groups of four to turn the bodies over in stainless-steel tanks.
"Your nails do not keep growing," Esquivel explained. "Your skin starts to pull back, making it look like they're growing."
Gonzales confirmed her assertion as the students prepared to make a series of shallow incisions on the backs of their specimens. They applied a little pressure to the razor-sharp scalpels as they cut through epidermis and adipose, the thin layer of fatty tissue beneath the skin. They had to be careful not to damage the muscular tissue they were preparing to examine.
In Chair Mary Allen-Martin's lab for MRTS 2432, Human Anatomy, students are accustomed to the presence of bodies.
All that the students are told about their specimens is the date they died, what they died from and how old they were when they passed away.
The heads of cadavers are shaved to make them seem less human and more like laboratory specimens, Esquivel said.
Instead of names, the cadavers are given identification numbers, printed on small metal discs clipped to the ears.
Allen-Martin, however, prefers that her students remember that the cadavers were people and respect them. Some students even give their specimens a name.
By the end of the semester, students in the lab will have dissected and probed the specimens from head to toe, examining various organs and body tissues while paying extra attention to the circulatory system.
The bodies come from the University of Texas Health Science Center, and the services that are necessary to receive them cost $2,000 per cadaver, Allen-Martin said.
The number of cadavers given to the college depends on the number of qualified students enrolled in Human Anatomy. This semester there are four bodies in the lab, and there were six in the fall.
Under close faculty supervision, the students have the ability to execute the initial embalming procedures on the recently deceased.
Students enrolled in MRTS 2445 and MRTS 2447, Technical Procedures 1 and 2, go to local funeral homes to receive embalming experience for their lab - but oftentimes, there are no bodies for the students to embalm.
Families of the recently deceased must give written permission for a funeral home to allow students to embalm them, Allen-Martin explained, and verbal permission is all that is needed for a licensed embalmer to complete the job.
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