Do You Have Brains Here? My experience on a special tour of the U of T Anatomy Museum

Tonight I saw my first dead body...s. Hands, feet, lungs and tiny foetuses sat in orderly rows on spotless shelves, drowning in formaldehyde. Faces from another time stared, unseeing, through the glass walls of the tanks that held them prisoner. Their eyelashes and eyebrow hairs were still intact, looking fragile and beautiful, like shards of glass. I felt as though I was in a dream, like I was gliding through a Bizarro wax museum.

I looked at one man, beheaded and sliced. His lips were slightly parted, his eye sockets gaped. He had no eyeballs. A sign on his tank read: “Left hemisphere, anterior view.” His brain looked awkward, peering out of his skull like that. What were the thoughts it once held? What ideas did this man once have, that would never be revealed? Where had he travelled? What had he done? Who had he hated? Who had he loved? He had been preserved in the 1950s. What had his world been like? What would he think of everything that has happened since then?

Suddenly, I felt awful. This person was real, not a diagram or a wax sculpture. He had been stared at and studied for the past fifty years in this “Anatomy Museum” by thousands of U of T students. His diseases and irregularities had been pointed at, drawn, “duly noted.” He would never be at rest.

And nobody around me seemed to care. The sound of someone asking, “Do you have any brains here?” -- God, like we were in a grocery store -- made me feel sick. I turned away and fled into another “aisle”... only to be faced with a row of hands. Hands. I don’t know why the sight of them affected me so much -- more than even the disembodied heads. Some of the skin had been peeled away to reveal sinewy muscles and branching veins. But the skin and nails still lay on a few fingers and I could just feel them reaching, clasping my hand in greeting. Standing in that sea of hands, I felt horribly alone.

I’ve never thought much about donating my body to science. I always assumed I’d be an organ donor but in the end I knew I’d be cremated. The idea of lying for years in a cushioned coffin while maggots made adventurous treks into my eye sockets never really appealed to me. But was this a better alternative? Being on display like that seems even more morbid. Is that selfish of me? After all, I’d be dead by then, so what would it matter?

Using that logic, I should feel no qualms about gazing nonchalantly at the “specimens” here. Yet I do. How do medical students bear to actually dissect humans? Consumed with this question, I turned to one of the smiling guides. “How do you stand it?” I asked. “Isn’t it awful?”

It was a relief to see her hesitate; it meant I wasn’t alone in my confusion and repulsion and sadness.

“We stress respect,” she said softly, describing the special ceremony at the end of the year for all the families, when the bodies were cremated. “And eventually you -- you come to see that this is what they truly wanted...”

She turned to gaze at the wall of jars with a serene expression on her face and I realized that she had come to peace with the whole thing. Maybe someday I’ll have that look of calm. Maybe it’s only shock that made me feel this way. The others on the tour were mostly elderly couples. They had probably seen death, and come to terms with it... but I hadn’t. And I hope I don’t have to for a long time.

I left the others to continue their questioning and gesturing.

I still have a lifetime to deal with death. I don’t need to start now.

Tamils’ Information, February 2004