Torie Bosch , 2025-04-30 08:30:00
In the 19th century, medical schools were desperate for corpses from which their students could learn. Grave robbers would sell bodies; sometimes, janitors, students, or even instructors would themselves dig up corpses.
Today’s medical students don’t have to go into cemeteries themselves, but schools still struggle to find cadavers that are both ethically sourced and affordable. So many are deciding to forgo the use of cadavers to teach students about human anatomy.
First-year medical student Nadir Al-Saidi was disappointed to learn that his school was making the same choice. He wrote about it in his recent First Opinion essay, “Medical schools are eliminating the use of cadavers, and that’s a shame” and joined me on the “First Opinion Podcast” to discuss what he has learned in the cadaver lab, and why technology can’t replace the real thing.
“In a body, everything is so interconnected,” he said. “Things touch each other, things press on each other. … You have to take the structure in the context of where it is in the body, what organs it is really close to, how do the vessels and arteries and nerves interconnect and intertwine in that.” Technology can’t replicate that.
“Aside from the anatomy that I learned from the cadavers, I would say for me, the biggest lesson I took from cadaver lab was just being in the presence of death, and what I like to call the illness narrative, because for each illness, there is a story behind it,” he said. We talked about the value of learning from a real body, and how Congress might be able to save cadaver-based medical education.
For more on 19th-century grave-robbing, read Antero Pietila’s story in Smithsonian magazine about Baltimore’s particularly wild cadaver trade.
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