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Observing Students Who Are Real 'Cutups'
 
BY PAULINE M. MILLARD
Associated Press Writer
 
NEW YORK (AP) _ "Body of Knowledge: One Semester of Gross Anatomy, the Gateway to Becoming a Doctor" (Scribner, 272 pages, $24) by Steve Giegerich.
 
Peeling off skin and sawing open heads may seem like the makings of a horror movie, but for a medical student it's just another day in the lab.
 
Steve Giegerich, author of "Body of Knowledge," got to watch a team of students pull apart a human body bit by bit.
 
Giegerich, a writer for the Asbury Park (N.J.) Press, looked over the shoulders of four students at the New Jersey Medical School in Newark as they probed the human body in this most intimate way. As one student put it: "The only people who do this are medical students. And psychopaths."
 
Giegerich was there when the students first "met" their cadaver, which was covered in towels and lying on a stainless steel counter.
 
"Tall in stature, the man had a prominent nose, large ears and a receding hairline. He reminded Ivan of his father. The eyes were shut tight as was the mouth; for that the students at table 26 were grateful. Pursed lips were preferable to a mouth contorted in what med students call a 'death scream.'"
 
A pivotal point for the group was deciding which of them would make the first cut; unfortunately, the task fell to a professor hoping to show them a good way to cut through skin.
 
"Yet somehow, they'd all arrived at the place and point in time, four students, with nothing in common, about to share an experience which, should they never see each other again following graduation, would bond them forever," Giegerich writes. "As Dr. Rose drifted away, they stood alone and they stood as one, with nothing left to do but cut."
 
More important than the actual cutting is the mental transformation the students undergo as they move from the chest to the head and then down to the legs and feet. The drama and angst of the first cut soon gives way to a sort of ennui as locating nerves and vessels becomes more important than fighting over the scalpel.
 
"Familiarity emboldened them: No longer was the scalpel the enemy; the act of dissection ceased being a big deed that summoned fear. It's the juncture, said Dr. Vasan, when the students slowly understand themselves."
 
Giegerich also exposes readers to the tiny nuances of medical school, including the taboo of discussing one's grade and the pungent aroma of embalming fluid that seeps into clothing and creates the "first year smell." His descriptions are often gruesome, as human dissections are, and peppered with dark medical school humor.
 
But for those who can stomach the passages that are often a little uncomfortably graphic, "Body of Knowledge" offers a fascinating personal glimpse into the mysterious world of medical school.