SIX
Pathology
Though we cut into the inside, we see but the outside of things
and make but new superficies to stare at ... Nature performs all
her operations in the body by parts so minute and insensible that
I think nobody will ever hope or pretend even by the assistance
of glasses or other inventions to come to a sight of them.”
—John LockeThe frigid, metallic reality of the morgue at the University of Kansas is
still disquieting to me, even as a veteran of over twenty autopsies. Instead
of charging ahead into my third year of medical school, I have accepted a
research fellowship in the Bone Research Laboratory with the world-class
pathologist and researcher H. Clarke Anderson, MD. In addition to
investigating cancer cell lines and bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs,
the signaling chemicals that initiate and control bone growth), I am
obligated to take autopsy calls with Dr. Anderson. Here, in the dead of
winter, I have been summoned to the morgue to investigate the cause of
death in a local milk deliveryman.
The morgue is altogether different from the anatomy labs. As first year
medical students, we became habituated to the cadavers in the anatomy
room—their rigid, embalmed structures slowly revealing themselves to us
in successive weeks. Every day, my two dissection partners and I would
follow the instructions in our dissection manual and explore a particular
anatomical detail in our cadaver, a seventy-four-year-old female. In time,
the novelty of being surrounded by seventy corpses vanished, and
questions of their backstories and humanity faded.