This isn’t an ordinary room — it’s full of dead bodies.
You’re instantly aware of the odor emanating from the tissue fluids keeping the bodies moist — masking the more powerful stench of other fluids that leak from the corpses during dissection.
Human bones cover the tables while charts of body systems and skeletons line the walls.
Human Anatomy 1, taught by orthopedic surgeon and instructor Dr. Gregory Strum, is offered this term to undergraduate students through the exercise and movement science department. Strum’s class offers students a chance to learn about the structure and function of the human body with some real teaching aids.
While the students won’t dissect the bodies this term, they will observe their laboratory teaching assistants in the process of examining the structures of the cadavers.
By the spring, Strum will teach and supervise them as they pick up the scalpel themselves.
Strum said the course is challenging because the students have to identify the many human structures and systems for the midterm and final.
“It’s like learning a foreign language,” Strum said. “What I hope is that the students will learn to think in anatomic terms.”
He said the bodies have been donated to medical science and come from Oregon Health Sciences University. They were bought for approximately $1,100.
Two of the teaching assistants for the course, Reed Ferber and Susan Verscheure, have had the opportunity to dissect many cadavers previously.
Ferber is teaching the laboratory section for the sixth year. He said he enjoys teaching students about their own bodies and giving them an appreciation for the complexity of the human body, and hopes the students will eventually go on to enter health-related fields.
“Students walk away with an understanding of EMS,” Verscheure said. “They can say: ‘I know where the deltoid muscle inserts.’”
But before the dissection begins, students have to be mentally ready to see a corpse on the examining table.

“I basically tell them they have to deal with it,” Ferber said.Strum said, in the beginning, the person still looks human, but after the dissection has been in progress for some time, the body loses its human appearance.”It’s a lot harder to understand the body with everything over top of it,” Verscheure said.
She said it is easier to see the muscles and organs with the skin off.
“The brain doesn’t look like much as an organ,” Strum said. “But the way it functions neurologically is enormously complex.”
Verscheure said some students have shown no apprehension about dissection and are already asking to look at the cadavers.
“They are really excited,” she said.
However, not all students are prepared: Strum said one student passed out the first year Strum taught the class.
Ferber said by the second or third time the bodies are uncovered, students understand the etiquette and respect involved in the process.
Verscheure admitted she often wonders what the person being dissected was like during life and how he or she died.
“That is the fun part. It’s a mystery,” Verscheure said. “I prefer to know about the person.”
Verscheure said she once looked at the body of a male who had an artificial knee, but the story surrounding the injury was an unsolved puzzle.
“It would have been interesting to know something about the person because we now are seeing the end result,” she said.
Strum said that the most frequent causes of death in the cadavers they receive are cancer and heart or lung disease. While the person’s medical report is available to the students, often the cause of death is unknown.
“If a body is donated to science, there is no autopsy,” Strum said. “If the physician caring for the person was not certain of the cause of death, it may not be known exactly [how the person died].”
Ferber said students really get to know the person to whom their attention is devoted.
“They almost end up being part of the family,” Ferber said. “You really get to know the little intricacies about them.”
Sophomore biology major Karina Brown, a volunteer in the emergency room at Sacred Heart Medical Center and a student in the class, said she is looking forward to dissecting the cadavers.
“Being able to explore our own bodies and deal with something that is so applicable, I think will be awesome,” Brown said. “I just think of them as generous people who were willing to donate their bodies to science. They should be treated with respect and not harmed.”