Strange feelings leave the building of the anatomical faculty of the Athens Medical School. About 4,000 anatomical exhibits, together with the skeleton of a giant and a dwarf, win first impressions, but they are followed by contact with the open, frozen, funerary world. Rooms for embalming and freezing corpses, a hall of benches where classes are held, an anatomy hall built in 1930 according to German standards and one of the few anatomy halls in Europe, rooms with anatomical tables with the latest technology, everything makes up a world that you want to see from afar, afraid to touch it.

“Until 1980, unclaimed cadavers were used for anatomy lessons. Now there is body donation.” – says Mr. Theodoros Truppis “K”., chief surgeon and director of the anatomical laboratory of the Athens School of Medicine. According to him, about 25-30 body proposals are made every year, the last of which was to the late actor Kostas Kazakos. “Kazakos, through his movement, contributed to the education of doctors, and his act demonstrates courage and altruism. “Imagine the donor’s body becomes… a sheet and a pen on an anatomy table,” he adds.

Process

After receiving the body from the funeral home staff, the medical school’s anatomy laboratory staff cleans and waxes the body in large areas on the ground floor. He is then placed in a recumbent position and the embalming process follows. The body is kept for 48 hours outside of conservation in the air, if necessary, local injections of formalin, and then placed in conservation-freeze for 2-3 years. There are three formalin tanks in the embalming room, but they are now … museum ones, as they are rarely used, only as additions. They date back to 1930.

The embalming and preservation areas on the ground floor are connected by an elevator to a large dissection room on the 1st floor. So, when it is considered ready for display for educational purposes, the body is transferred on a stretcher to a room where there are 23 anatomical marble tables. “We used to use from 8 to 10 corpses, now we have about 4 corpses, on which the teacher makes anatomical incisions and presents a lesson to the students,” says Mr Trupi “K”.. There are real skeletons in the same area, for the sake of the lesson.

The skeleton of a giant and the skeleton of Antonis Samarakis stand out among the approximately 4,000 exhibits that first-year students of the Athens School of Medicine see.

first aid room

Next to the large elevator is a small room with two examination beds and a pharmacy. There, first aid is provided to students who cannot stand the sight of a corpse. “Some people have diabetes and need special care,” says Mr Trupi, who says he advises freshmen when they enter the anatomy room for a cadaver class not to think about the image of their grandfather or their grandmother’s grandmother. “The doctor must act without emotion. Empathy and humanity are always present and should be. But sentimentality and irascibility must be avoided for the sake of proper diagnosis and treatment, ”he emphasizes. Each corpse is used in the course for one academic year. The bodies are then buried at the institution’s expense.

Digital corpses

Impressive laboratory course on ultra-modern anatomical tables. “The acquisition of three of them took place during the reign of Thanos Dimopoulos, and they made the laboratory one of the most advanced laboratories in the Balkans,” says Mr. Trupi. The table bench is essentially a screen on which the proforma of the body is displayed and the cuts required by the move are made on it.

On the same floor of the Athens School of Medicine, the anatomy laboratory keeps its history. Three rooms contain the skeleton and personal belongings of the writer Antonis Samarakis, who was one of the first known body donors in Greece. The showcases display the skeleton of a giant found in the mountains of Pontus in 1924 and nicknamed “Amanatis”, and opposite the skeleton of a dwarf. The space contains exhibits from 1880: bones, as well as situations that are incompatible with life (for example, the Siamese). It also houses the first X-ray machine, which dates back to the mid-1950s and was donated to the laboratory by Professor Eutychios Voridis.

Freshmen from the Athens Medical School have entered the world, choosing an operation that requires composure and a strong stomach.