2. The Stiffs
Anatomy dissections take place on the 6th floor. There are four stiffs to a room, one in each corner, on a dissecting table, each one getting dissected by four students. Eddie's team includes tall, curly black-haired, intensely intellectual Robert Steinberg; short, wiry brown-haired, neurotic Herbert Schneiderman; and uncombed, red-haired, devil-may-care Norman Stern, who prefers "Danny," his middle name, over Norman. They are dissecting their stiff on the northwest corner table (as you enter the room, to your left across by window). The instructor is an anatomist from Paris, Jacques Greenberg.
It is October 1956, one month into the first year. The stiff lies on the table, front up; the four students stand, two on each side. The dissection, a 1-hour session and five a week, has reached their having opened the chest and working on the heart, the great vessels and the lungs. The students wear black rubber aprons, masks, and gloves. Sharp irritating formaldehyde fills the room.
Instructor Jacques, in long white lab coat, is bent over the open chest.
"Look you!" he exclaims in his odd English, pointing at the grimy dark surfaces of the spongy lungs that lie exposed by the front chest wall having been electric sawed and folded open like a book for reading.
"Why is it black?" asks Schneiderman nervously, worried his own lungs might look like that.
"All zee cigarettes he smoke when alive! Like all zeese ozzer steef, he was a Bowery boom and he smoke. Zat is why zee black lung."
Jacques turns his attention to the heart and great vessels. Taking a scalpel he slices open the big artery that comes out of the left heart chamber. He points the tip of his scalpel to the clean-looking, white inner lining.
"Zees one was age seexty-seeks. Alk'holic too. Look you, zee clean artery! Alk'holics nevair 'ave damage to zee artery. Zey 'ave liver cirrhosis, cancer, brain dementia but nevair artery dizeese. Zee alk'hol dizzolve zee fat. You muss remembair zees, zhentlemahn! In France we drink wine but always moderate. And we 'ave c'est bon arteries like zees guy.
OK. zhentlemahn, continue!" He hands the scalpel to Danny.
Once a week Jacques quizzes them. As weeks pass, Eddie notices Danny is getting all answers correct - it is hard to miss the red 100% on Danny's returned quiz. No one else gets such a high score. Eddie wonders about that: Danny never studies yet he always has all the right answers?
As he gets to know Danny, well, they go out to a local pub and Danny, having had a bit too many, confides. "I been banging Jacque's secretary regular like. Nice lay. And she passes the week's quiz on to me. If you're havin' any trouble passin’ the course, le' me know."
Eddie does not take him up on the offer. Next morning Danny regrets his blabbing to Eddie. But as weeks go by and it becomes clear Eddie is not telling anyone, Danny realizes Eddie is a gem of a friend and their friendship deepens.
On another dissection session, Jacques demonstrates in the upper abdomen. He points to the intact liver lying under lower rib edge. "Look you! Zat is fat. Alk'hol turn zee liver to fat and zen -" - Jacques slices into the dark brown shiny liver - "Eet 'arden into zee cirrhosis." He cuts deeper and exclaims! "Voila! Look you!" A large, round, white tumor pops out of the cut liver flesh. "A canzair! 'epatoma!"
Eddie wonders. Too much alcohol equals fatty, cirrhotic cancerous liver but it also equals beautifully clean arteries that could help a man live long. Perhaps the right balance - enough alcohol a day to keep the sclerosis away but not sliver the liver - could be a secret of long life? He speaks with Jacques about it and Jacques says, "C'est bon, Edouard! Why you not apply for summer research? Write me zee plan."
So Eddie is launched into research.
The brain is saved for last. A month before the end of the first year, with the rest of the body dissected to shreds, only an intact head remains with the boney cranium electric-sawed in a circle above the ears and the sawed-free top of the cranium opened like the cover of a book showing the top surface of both brain hemispheres on view. At first it looks to Eddie who had never seen a brain before like a bag of worms.
On that last Friday in May, Eddie hears that the great Leo Davidoff, the closest the Albert Einstein College of Medicine has to a Nobel Prize, wants a dissection of the central nervous system for his lecture demonstration on Monday, and Eddie must spend the weekend with Jacques dissecting the brain so it will be open for Ze Great Leo's Leckzure, as Jacques jokingly refers to Davidoff's Monday show.
They break for lunch and, just before it, Jacques and Eddie use the WC to pee. But before peeing, Jacques, who fancies he is teaching an ignorant American about French hygienic practice, stops Eddie from going to the urinal stand with a "Look you! Nevair to forget to wash zee hands before za urinayshion" and Eddie realizes he is being treated to Jacque's unique Frenchman's respect for the penis.
After relieving themselves they sit down to tuna fish sandwiches and Coca Colas. Eddie feels he is really learning new things and, he guesses, true things.
End of Chapter, next, click 15.3 Scenes from a Biochemistry Course
Once a week Jacques quizzes them. As weeks pass, Eddie notices Danny is getting all answers correct - it is hard to miss the red 100% on Danny's returned quiz. No one else gets such a high score. Eddie wonders about that: Danny never studies yet he always has all the right answers?
As he gets to know Danny, well, they go out to a local pub and Danny, having had a bit too many, confides. "I been banging Jacque's secretary regular like. Nice lay. And she passes the week's quiz on to me. If you're havin' any trouble passin’ the course, le' me know."
Eddie does not take him up on the offer. Next morning Danny regrets his blabbing to Eddie. But as weeks go by and it becomes clear Eddie is not telling anyone, Danny realizes Eddie is a gem of a friend and their friendship deepens.
On another dissection session, Jacques demonstrates in the upper abdomen. He points to the intact liver lying under lower rib edge. "Look you! Zat is fat. Alk'hol turn zee liver to fat and zen -" - Jacques slices into the dark brown shiny liver - "Eet 'arden into zee cirrhosis." He cuts deeper and exclaims! "Voila! Look you!" A large, round, white tumor pops out of the cut liver flesh. "A canzair! 'epatoma!"
Eddie wonders. Too much alcohol equals fatty, cirrhotic cancerous liver but it also equals beautifully clean arteries that could help a man live long. Perhaps the right balance - enough alcohol a day to keep the sclerosis away but not sliver the liver - could be a secret of long life? He speaks with Jacques about it and Jacques says, "C'est bon, Edouard! Why you not apply for summer research? Write me zee plan."
So Eddie is launched into research.
The brain is saved for last. A month before the end of the first year, with the rest of the body dissected to shreds, only an intact head remains with the boney cranium electric-sawed in a circle above the ears and the sawed-free top of the cranium opened like the cover of a book showing the top surface of both brain hemispheres on view. At first it looks to Eddie who had never seen a brain before like a bag of worms.
They break for lunch and, just before it, Jacques and Eddie use the WC to pee. But before peeing, Jacques, who fancies he is teaching an ignorant American about French hygienic practice, stops Eddie from going to the urinal stand with a "Look you! Nevair to forget to wash zee hands before za urinayshion" and Eddie realizes he is being treated to Jacque's unique Frenchman's respect for the penis.
After relieving themselves they sit down to tuna fish sandwiches and Coca Colas. Eddie feels he is really learning new things and, he guesses, true things.
End of Chapter, next, click 15.3 Scenes from a Biochemistry Course
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