Against all odds, I have survived the second block of medical school! Whereas that block was supposed to be the hardest of first year, this next one is supposed to contain the hardest individual class: neuroscience. Fear for my worn out brain aside, I'm excited to get back into the anatomy lab to look at some other brains.
TIL: For hundreds of years, medical students had to rob graves in order to have bodies to dissect. They were called resurrectionists and would go out on - I kid you not - dark and stormy nights in the fall when the ground is still moist and easier to dig. Creepy Halloween story much? Kids were even warned about the "night doctor" who would snatch them off the street to dissect them if they weren't home on time.
In 1788, medical students from Columbia were confronted by an angry mob for dissecting a white woman. The color and gender is important, because no one had a problem with people dissecting black slaves or white male murderers. The governor called in the local militia to protect the anatomists but they wouldn't fight their fellow New Yorkers, so the upstate militia was called in. This was the first major riot in the fledgling United States.
The oldest medical building in the US at the University at Maryland and is built like a labyrinth to keep riot mobs from easily finding the anatomy lab.
In 1989, the University of Georgia started renovating its old medical school building and had to have the anthropology department excavate the bones of dozens of stolen dissection bodies from the dirt floor of the basement.
The Wellcome Museum of Anatomy and Pathology in London is only open to physicians and medical students (and other allied health professionals).
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