Dr. Galen's Little Black Bag: Stories. R.A. Comunale M.D. M.D.
tearful voice kept repeating those words. Hedley and Gable re-zipped the bag and wheeled the cart out of the lab. Within minutes the morgue attendant arrived with another body.
We began examining our cadaver.
In life he had been a big man, powerfully built, like a boxer. African-American, he didn’t appear to be older than his mid-to-late forties. What could have killed a man like this? We would soon find out.
Hey, Sal, bet this is what you’d have looked like in twenty five years!
No answer.
“Listen up, peepuwl.”
Jeez, now he’s Elmer Fudd!
Hedley continued: “What happened to your colleague this morning is a reminder; death overtakes us all. At some point, each and every one of you will see someone close to you—someone you know—die.”
Carol nodded.
I remembered Angie, Tomas, and especially Salvatore; all my early childhood friends now gone, snatched from life before my very eyes.
“We’re going to remove the brain first. It’s the most fragile and difficult organ to preserve and some may … uh … not be in …uh… good shape.”
Gable and Hedley exchanged glances.
At that remark a group of graduate anatomy students arrived, each carrying an electric circular saw and a large morgue scalpel. One walked to our table, and, as we watched, he made a semicircular cut two-thirds around the cadaver’s scalp. He reached out and in one, sock-removing motion, pulled the scalp up and forward. Then he placed the saw against the now-bare skull, and the rotating blade easily cut through the bone.
Dead bone smells like burning dog hair when it’s cut.
“Voila! Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the human brain.”
Our graduate student bowed as we applauded.
Once more the sounds of retching, but this time it was a response to the terrible, rotting-flesh odor filling the air.
“Sorry, folks,” Hedley said, “but as I told you, sometimes the preservative doesn’t reach the brain.”
Damned good thing my brain was fresh, right Berto?
Sal, you didn’t have one.
That wasn’t an insult. One of the shotgun blasts had taken half of Sal’s head off.
Two rows down a foul-smelling pablum oozed from the brain case of the cadaver lying there.
The graduate student at the table cleaned up the mess. Meanwhile Hedley and Gable circulated, eventually reaching us.
“Ah, splendid!” Hedley gushed, as he noted our cadaver’s intact brain.
Well, not truly intact. A large, preserved blood clot had indented a good portion of the left side.
“This is wonderful, students. It’s obvious what killed this man.”
Gable seemed in ecstasy.
Whatever turns ya on, lady.
Shut up, Sal.
Our cadaver, whom we soon nicknamed “Harry,” had died of a massive stroke. A major artery had ruptured in his brain, probably killing him instantly. In life, like many African-Americans, he had suffered from uncontrolled high blood pressure. Unfortunately, like most men of any skin color back then, he probably ignored the symptoms or had no inkling that he had a problem.
I think of the myriad drugs we have today to treat elevated blood pressure and the ethnic-specific drugs that can be even more effective. Back then we had fluid pills—diuretics—and a drug called alpha methyl dopa, which caused people to pass out when they stood up too quickly. Our biggest gun was a hideously powerful and unstable medication called nitroprusside. It often killed more than it helped.
Once more Hedley’s voice changed, this time a close match to Daffy Duck.
Wonder if he can do Bugs Bunny.
Each of you has your disthecting kit, yeth?
His pronunciation of “dissecting” would have made Daffy or even Sylvester the Cat proud.
We all nodded. The wallet-sized, plastic kit held a large bladed scalpel, semi-dull scissors, pointed probe and tweezers.
“For the most part, the best tools you have will be your fingers,” Gable added.
Quit lickin’ yer chops, Berto.
I couldn’t help it; I let out a snorting laugh, which drew a glare from Gravel Gertie.
Later we found out that her hoarse voice was the result of a rare condition affecting her vocal cords. It would ultimately take her life.
“Blunt dissection is always your best bet. You won’t damage structures that way.”
While we looked on, Hedley’s hands reached like ice-cream scoops on either side of Harry’s brain, his gloved fingers gently loosening the tissues from the boney case we call the skull. He motioned for me to cut underneath where the telephone cables of the brain—what ultimately becomes the spinal cord—exit through the base of the skull.
The entire class watched Hedley triumphantly holding that tan-gray object above his head like a proud father.
All that Harry had once been, all that he had once felt and experienced—love, hate, happiness, despair, ecstasy—vibrated as electrical and chemical impulses through that amazingly compact, organic computer.
Where was Harry now?
Ya don’ wanna know, kid.
Days, weeks, months passed. Gradually we got to know Harry more intimately than any partner he had had in life. We spent extra time on weekends and evenings studying him, often bringing snacks and sandwiches to munch on. We’d quiz one another on the various structures such as Harry’s cigarette-smoke-stained lungs, his enlarged heart surrounded by fat, his coronary arteries already almost completely occluded. If the stroke hadn’t killed him Harry would have died almost as quickly from a massive heart attack. And if that hadn’t done him in, the aneurysm in his aorta, a balloon-like weakness in the artery wall, would have sparked a fatal hemorrhage if someone had punched him in the gut—or even if he had sneezed too hard.
Harry’s other internal organs were no better. His liver was also enlarged, and his pancreas was scarred from too much alcohol. His gallbladder was filled with stones; his kidneys shrunken, the effect of the prolonged, high blood pressure.
This man had felt pain and ignored it for most of his adult life.
No doubt about it, Harry had lived hard and died young. The scarring from gonorrhea and syphilis, and the premature enlargement of his prostate, betrayed his penchant for the ladies.
The only organs that seemed intact were his stomach and intestines—until Gable pointed out the ulcers, a result of his alcohol intake.
We examined Harry’s muscles, separating each one out and noting how it created a particular motion. It was a difficult study; the preservative fluids had made the muscle fibers brittle, and the evaporation and drying out made them less comprehensible.
We spent time on another cadaver as well—a necessity for learning the distaff anatomy. During our first trade, we learned that the other group had named her “Shirley.”
Reminds me of the gal that was with me when I got whacked. Remember her, Berto?
The old nursery rhyme is wrong; women aren’t made of sugar and spice, and not everything is nice. They, too, can live hard lives and suffer the consequences, often more severely than their male counterparts.
Sometimes I dream of Harry and Shirley.
Did they ever meet in life?
By early spring our cadaver was now in pieces. We had been