By Bill Storm
12 2011 Humane Teachers for Humane Students
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PHOTO By Istockphoto
Connecting with Students
ate at night, you, an enthusiastic medical student in London in 1815, attend your class in anatomy, and your professor turns to request you meet a cart just now arriving at the school’s stable door. You open the heavy wooden double door, and your nose is met by the combined smells of lathered horse, fresh earth, and perhaps just the hint of decay. You witness two of your classmates lugging a heavy, six-foot-long, limp object wrapped in canvas from the cart bed and into the shadows of the school’s surgical theatre. Their black overcoats, boots, and gloved hands are covered in fresh, moist earth, their faces radiant, their voices animated. Your learning will proceed, thanks to the activities of these body snatchers, or “resurrection men” as they were fondly known—illegal, but acknowledged as a necessary evil in the burgeoning medical school business of 19th century London. Your 21st century sensibilities may not help you share the sense of wonder