The interior of a dissecting room

This is a typical scene in the dissecting room of a British university medical school, perhaps around 1900-1910. The cadaver lies on a ceramic anatomy-table. A gas lamp is above the corpse. A student has placed a book on the cadaver's forearm as if the cadaver were holding it for him - a mildly disrespectful action that today a medical school would not condone. Two of the men are smoking pipes (no disrespect there: smoking at work was normal). Anatomical prints are suspended on the wall.

In examinations for medical degrees then, anatomy held a much more important place than it does now, although even then there were some who thought it was overvalued by comparison with other qualifications required by general practitioners, such as an understanding of pharmacology and of medical politics.

On the other hand, others have advocated that the dissection of the human body would be a beneficial part of the school curriculum at GCSE or A-level. Part of the success of the Bodyworlds exhibitions staged by Gunther von Hagens has been due to the fact that schools do not enable children to see what the human body consists of or how it works. Where do the cadavers that are used in university medical schools come from? Under current British legislation, they come from people who will their bodies to medical schools for this purpose.