Cadaver funeral
 
The cadaver funeral, common at medical schools across the country, pays fitting tribute to the dead Published: The Globe and Mail, July 6, 1991, FOCUS BY DEBORAH JONES, LOWER SACKVILLE, N.S. IN a large grave on a grassy knoll, boxes holding the cremated remains of 29 people are laid side by side. As a cemetary caretaker shovels soil over the brass name plaques, 300 mourners gather in a local church for an unusual funeral service. The shock of death has subsided - the people being honoured died between one and three years ago - but still there are tears. Over the past 10 years, the funeral and the wake that follows has become an important community event for survivors of people who donated their bodies to the anatomy department in the faculty of medicine at Dalhousie University. The cadaver funeral in this suburb near Halifax is attended by health-profession students and teachers, as well as the relatives and friends of the donors. Says anatomy professor June Penney: "These people have given a gift to medical science. So it's really a thanksgiving service for their gift." The funeral is also part of an effort to underline the necessity of cadavers in the education of doctors, dentists and occupational therapists. Moreover, it is a means of giving reassurance that the bodies are treated with respect. Students at about 60 Canadian universities dissect several hundred cadavers each year. At the end of term, almost all anatomy departments hold memorial services. Dalhousie's is among the most elaborate. The university started holding these funerals after a 1980 study found that 80 per cent of first-year medical students suffered psychological problems from their first encounter with a cadaver. "They meet the cadaver the first week they arrive," says Ms. Penney. "It's always the thing they're concerned about, especially so if somebody has had a death in the family. If they know someone who died in Nova Scotia and donated their body they're always worried that it might appear." In addition to the funeral for cadavers, Dalhousie now gives students orientation seminars to prepare them for anatomy classes. There are also courses offered on death and dying. "It seems to have made a tremendous difference to the way they approach anatomy. We have far less horsing around and joking around in the dissecting room," says Ms. Penney. During the anatomy courses, students know nothing about the cadaver except age and cause of death. At the funeral, donors are thanked by name and students meet the donors' relatives. The funeral is a bridge between the university and community, anatomy department head David Hopkins tells the mourners, and everyone "must interact to ensure that medical knowledge continues." This year's Christian funeral service, with its organ music and the presence of Anglican, Catholic and Protestant ministers, was in honor of 58 donors. Half were buried in family plots and the rest in the Dalhousie University plot. (The school pays all funeral costs in its plot, which is sometimes an incentive to donate a body.) Most anatomy departments across the country (which in the past received unclaimed bodies) depend on people to fill out forms, similar to organ- donor cards, that specify a donation to education. In many schools there is a shortage of cadavers. Thus, it is critical that the public be assured the bodies are treated with respect. At Queen's University in Kingston, Ont., for example, at the first anatomy class each year "a chaplain comes and talks to them about how these are people and they should be respected and they've made a contribution. They're somebody's mother, sister, father, brother," says Anita Lister of Queen's anatomy department. Undeniably, however, cadaver donations are a matter of great sensitivity. Donna Foulkes, administrative assistant of Dalhousie's anatomy department, recalls this incident in Halifax a few years ago that caused grief: A defunct theatre company discarded its props, including a plastic skeleton, in an alley garbage bin. Someone mistook the skeleton for a real one and soon the local media was full of stories about where it had come from. "People called us, crying, accusing us of throwing out their husband," says Ms. Foulkes. Dalhousie, which gets 90 per cent of its cadavers by donation, sometimes finds itself enmeshed in family matters, although it refuses donations if relatives are opposed. "Each one of our teaching cadavers comes with a whole living family and all of their concerns, their conflicts and their grieving processes," says Ms. Foulkes. Sometimes there's confusion about the cadaver's final disposal; difficulties can arise, for example, in cases in which a donor had two former wives with different wishes. "Our relationship is a little different than a funeral director's and we try to help people with these types of things." Deborah Jones is a regular contributor to Focus. Copyright Deborah Jones 1991 About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted. Please contact me for reprint rights. All material copyrighted ../About.htmlshapeimage_1_link_0
Medical schools pay fitting tribute
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