In the spirit of Halloween, Monday With... found a location on campus that may be unsettling to some people.

But, rest assured, the anatomy lab in Anderson Hall is an educational experience for the students involved.

Chris Hubbard, associate professor of cell biology, and Daniel Olson, assistant professor of human anatomical services, use cadavers to help students better understand the human body and its intricacies.

The Northern Star sat down with Hubbard to dissect the mysterious anatomy lab.

Northern Star: For those who do not know about the lab, what is its purpose?
Chris Hubbard: Like any laboratory in the university, it’s to provide a laboratory experience for a given course that we teach. There are two of them: BIOS 311 Functional Human Anatomy which is a laboratory in which the students view the cadavers but don’t dissect them, and BIOS 446 Gross Human Anatomy which is the physical therapy program service course and there they do their own dissection just like they were in a medical school.

NS: How can you reassure those who may be a little leery of the lab?
CH: Well when they first go into the lab, we explain to them first of all the fact that these people have purposely donated their body to NIU and we should treat them with respect.

In the past, people in medical school and other laboratories such as this have sort of not treated the bodies quite with the respect they deserve, but I tell them that these were human beings who specifically donated their body to this purpose and we should consider it a gift.
That’s very unusual; very few people will ever get this opportunity in their lifetime to see the human body the way it really is.

So we do that and they’re already covered to begin with. They really don’t look the way most people envision them looking. In other words, it doesn’t look real most of the time. They are fixed, they are embalmed so they will never decay. And the color is not the same as a living human. Generally people are not usually as shocked as they thought they might be.

NS: What was your first experience in an anatomy lab?
CH: That was a long time ago. I don’t know ... I don’t recall being terribly shocked one way or the other. I know that initially the students feel maybe a little reticent to get into the business of doing their dissections, but I’d say within a day or so they have so much work to do that the issue really goes away and they concentrate on what they are supposed to be doing.

They don’t think about the fact that it’s a dead human being.

NS: What is the most beneficial part of being able to work with a cadaver in the lab?
CH: Unlike models, which are not real, and don’t really look like the real thing at all, especially for the physical therapists who will be dealing with live humans, this may be the only chance they have to see the parts that they are going to be working with for the rest of their careers. The feel, the touch, the texture of the tissue is important in understanding how it works and its location. You can’t get that from a plastic model, you can’t get that from looking at a picture. And so it’s part of the learning experience to be able to see it, feel it, touch it.

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