Returned to the Human Anatomy Lab and positioned myself at the head of the gurney looking from the top of the cadaver towards the abdomen and lower features. The scalp had been pulled off of the skull and draped over the face. The top of the skull was removed and the brain was also removed.
so my challenge is to clarify what I’m looking at. As the dissections take place over several weeks, even months and the students are removing skin, muscles, bones, vessels and other features to examine internal structures, it can get quite tricky to identify anatomical features and produce drawings in which there is a clear understanding of what one is looking at. The above drawings depict the head, neck and upper thoracic region and a feature you might expect to see are the clavicle bones.
However, in all three drawings there is some mystery as to what has become of the two bones, each which rest one end on the top of a shoulder and the other on the top of the sternum. In the view on and inverted marble sculpture, you can see the distinctive ridge of each which are also connected to the neck by the powerful sternocleidomastoid muscle which attaches to the lower rear of the mastoid process of the skull situated behind the ear.
so in the top drawing and the following detail of that drawing, you can see a continuous boney ridge between the the exposed cavity below the rib cage and the scale which rest on the cadaver’s face. But how can this be? The clavicle consist of two bones which rest on the top of the sternum and crest the U shape you witness beneath the Adam’s Apple.
It’s quite obvious my drawing has created confusion and the question is,”What is the structure as illustrated. I ran out of time to further investigate and more closely examine the feature and therefore its role in the architecture of the upper thoracic region and the neck in particular. It also goes to the heart of what is the challenge of drawing how one perceives the visual world, and the role of interpretation of visual phenomena.
The next entry in Butt Nellie Doodles will expand this inquiry.
Joined a Zoom meeting last week thru UIC (Univ. Of Illinois at Chicago) with PRN Peoples’ Response Network which featured live interviews of doctors & nurses who have been in Gaza. Gutwrenching. Sketched while listening. Sireen Jaber a RN spoke of her experiences taking care of patients of all ages that were brought to the hospital and the horrid conditions they worked under. Dr Chandra Hassan, a surgeon at UIC, showed graphic fotos & footage of operations & the wretched conditions inside hospitals still in operation. Up close images of shrapnel wounds, burned victims, amputations on men, women, & children, many enduring these operations with lack of anesthesia. Surgeons forced to perform operation holding only blades because scalpel handles were regarded as “dual use” implements. Doctors and nurses would be flooded with 20-30 or more severely injured patients because of the devastation of weaponry used. Dr. Hassan assured that the death count didn’t include huge numbers still trapped or buried under mountains of destroyed buildings. Some of the footage included the constant hum of drones. The narratives & imagery were not edited by news outlets sensitive to offending sponsors & were especially difficult to take in. Despite the capability of medical staff from the US & foreign countries, many of those treated die in the hospital & after surgery because the conditions make stemming infections a near impossibility & insufficient post op care and medications lacking because they are on some of the thousand of trucks prevented from entering into Gaza. Hellacious.
So I have been drawing from cadavers in the Humany Anatomy Lab at a local hospital. The cadavers once brought to the lab go thru progressive dissections by medical students over the course of a year before they are finally interred. It is an immense privilege to have access to the donors and their families gift to the hospital that future generations will become knowledgeable, capable surgeons and caregivers, raising the quality and capability of health professionals.
As an artist who began my adulthood in college studying science for three years before transitioning to fine art, I have had a constant desire to know and understand who we are. From the first time I saw the artwork of DaVinci, Michelangelo, Eakins, Rembrandt and the work of Vesalius I was mesmerized by their quest to know intimately the workings of the human body. In my science labs, I never dissected or participated in investigating any creature larger than frogs, I changed majors before upper level biology, but I knew I would be open to the opportunity should I have that chance. I now have that extraordinary opportunity and have participated about a dozen sessions with the possibility of also learning at a second University.
So, during my experience I have drawn cadavers that have been in the lab for months, being handled and dissected by students learning their craft. At times it has been very difficult recognizing specific anatomical features.
And it is that which is at the core of this post. Some have said that computers and digital simulators may replace the hands on of cadaver dissection and investigation, but I do wonder if there is something to be gained by students learning how to navigate through a body both visually and manually once that body has suffered extreme trauma and wear.
I have several anatomy books and charts, all of which have very clear illustrations and photography of bodies that were dissected by extremely talented professionals with years of practice. It’s tricky enough to find nerves and minute features under the best of circumstances, but add hemorrhaging, bodily fluids, other complicating factors and you’re up against real challenges. Now imagine you’re not working on a cadaver but a living human being that you’re trying to keep alive. A person who has been ripped to pieces by flying metal fragments, crushed by masonry, heavily bruised by severe blunt trauma, and caked with mud, concrete dust, glass shards, oil, with multiple compound fractures. As if that doesn’t set in panic and have your adrenal gland working overtime, locate that in an operating room ill equipped to to handle that because of makeshift lighting, insufficient supplies, dozens of severely injured patients waiting to be attended, very loud sounds of anguish because there is a shortage of anesthesia and fully conscious patients are enduring horrific wounds and fully invasive procedures when doctors have run out of anesthesia. Still not harrowing enough? Some of the doctors were medical students who hadn’t completed their degrees nor training.
I watched footage of these conditions in that jaw clenching presentation by Dr. Hassan and his colleagues.
The idea that an antiseptic, digital environment will be the best preparation for the shock and awe that could await a person of medicine for those moments when life throws a challenge at them.
The first thing that get you when you enter a cadaver lab is the smell. They have changed the chemicals but the smells are still unsettling. It’s an alert that you are preparing to have to channel your focus. I lost 90% of my sense of smell from Covid and it has barely improved in the three years since, yet when I unzipped the cadaver bag on my last visit I was braced by the scent wave that engulfed me. The cadaver was lying in a shallow pool of chemicals and the tissue discoloration can vary greatly from the previous cadaver. Those are part of the inquiry into the reality of what it is to be of this world.
My gratitude to Rush Hospital and the men and women who step into this hallowed profession.
Faber-Castell Pitt Artist Pens on paper.