His feet were sticking out! His pale, cold feet were sticking out! That's all that occupied my mind as we stood behind our cadaver, amidst the solemn atmosphere, on the first day I spent in the anatomy dissecting hall.

The cadaver was completely covered, we were a group of four 2nd year medical students waiting nervously behind our cadaver, to begin our first dissection of a human body. We stood with our heads bowed down, whilst the priest uttered a prayer in front of the dissecting hall. Standing beside him were anatomists, professors and deans who also had their heads bowed down in respect for the many who had donated their bodies for our benefit and to the progress of the Art of Medicine. The hall was filled with eager students, it was my first day in the dissecting hall and it felt like my first day at school. During the prayer and the speeches my eyes kept axiously wandering towards the, pale feet of the huge figure lying in front of us. The only part of the figure that was visible. There's a dead person in there, there's a dead person in front of me....my heart raced with anxiety. The prayer was over and we paid our respects and left the dissecting hall, it was Monday, we would only begin the dissection on the Friday that week. As we walked out, I took one last look at the cadaver's feet, the atmosphere was surreal.

That Friday we ran to our lockers got our textbooks, put on our white coats and raced to the dissecting hall. As we entered the hall, the cold air stilled our excitement, it's smell pungently flavoured with formalin, the chemical that's used to preserve the cadavers. We rushed to our cadaver, put on our gloves, and after the professors had instructed us, we removed the plastic covering from our cadaver. This was it, we were going to open up a dead body. I could sense the excitement in my group as well as the reluctance and anxiety. We removed the coverings and an old, male body, pale, cold and probably 6 feet tall was exposed, with a clothe still covering his face. We all stared at the saffron coloured clothe and we agreed to leave the face covered until we were more comfortable. Our cadaver had been very badly burned from groin downwards. Hinting at how he must have died. Later on, during the year, when we opened up the skull, most of the brain had been turned to mush possibly due to a haemorrhage from falling after getting burnt. We never really found out how he died. But, we always paid our respects, for he gave us the privilege and opportunity as a window into the human anatomy.

It was time for the first cut. As I placed the scalpel on the chest, above the sternum, I closed my eyes and said a quick silent prayer and then pressed the scalpel down. It went through the skin with ease, and I cut downwards, the scalpel was very sharp and cut through the skin and muscle easily. As we tried separating the skin from the chest muscles, first thing I noticed was the subcutaneous fat, globs of yellow, that formed a thick layer under the skin, looking like blobs of margarine. The other groups had cadavers with very little fat so they could proceed to the muscle dissection quickly. We had to spend a great deal of time clearing the fat, slowly so as not to cut away any muscle. It was long and messy too. Sometimes little pieces would spray onto our white-coats as we scraped it off the skin.

All fluids had been drained out of the cadaver already, so there was no blood. The muscles were a pale, greyish-pink colour. As we continued dissecting, our anxieties and fears got washed away by the technical and scientific detail of the body and the engrossing study of the anatomy. We learned mountains from each dissection, more than from a weeks study from books. I felt very privileged.

We became more confident at dissecting as the year progressed and the only time we got a bit nervous was when we saw his face for the first time. It made him seem "alive". But we got over it and learned a great deal. The human anatomy is beautiful. It's a beautiful, perfect machine that had many imperfections.

Today I remain grateful and thankful to the cadaver we learned from. The nameless, fountain of knowledge who helped us "from beyond the grave" to begin our journey to help others .