Dissecting the Mysteries of the Human Body

Disclaimer: This article contains details about human anatomy, tissue, and bones. It may not be appropriate for all readers.

Peeling Back the Layers on People’s Lives Through Dissection

Obituaries and eulogies often tell the life stories of people who have died.  

But there are exceptions. In some cases, the stories of the dearly departed are told through whole body donations to science. While this isn’t considered the typical channel of communication, every body has a story to tell. According to past online articles by sources that include Mental Floss (Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Donating Your Body to Science) and Popular Science, (What happens when you donate your body to science?  | Popular Science), around 20,000 people donate their entire bodies to science annually.

This is one of the lessons I learned in March 2025 when I and four other registrants attended a six-day cadaver dissection workshop led by Jim Pulciani, lab director at the Institute for Anatomical Research in Colorado Springs, CO. We worked on one donor during the week with help from two experienced assistants.

The workshop provided an opportunity to see how each part of the body, including skin, adipose (fat) tissue, muscles, fascia, bones, and organs, is interconnected. As an Essentrics® fitness instructor, seeing these structures from the inside out provided me with a better understanding of anatomy. It also helped me better appreciate the body’s inner workings through its structures, and its sacredness.

“We call our donors the teachers because we feel like they’re the tour guide, they’re the teachers,” said Pulciani in a Zoom interview. “They’re the most valuable resource here in the lab.” He also said, “Granted, they’re not here anymore, but their story is there, and their story is in that anatomy.”

Pulciani opened each day of the immersive experience with a briefing on what to expect and took questions. For someone like me, who had never before attended one of these events, it was a way to become at ease with the situation and set the tone for the day. Pulciani also took time each day to read a poem he had written, including “Ode to Adipose.” He likened each poem to a love letter to a different aspect of the body.

“I always make sure that we have some time at the beginning of the class and some time at the end of the class to sort of connect with the whole situation,” said Pulciani, adding, “Because again, I think that there’s a lot going on here that’s beyond the anatomy study. There’s a dead person in the room, and we have to connect with that and relate to that.”

 “We hold the space with deep respect, safety, and emotional care for all involved,” according to the lab’s website.

The website describes the dissection work as exploring anatomical systems “from the skin to the skeleton in a sequential, integrative format.” That is exactly what happened.

On day one, we carefully made our incisions into the torso, methodically peeling back the body’s largest organ, the skin, to see what the form in front of us would reveal. For the six days, we used scalpels and hemostats and later, other instruments that included a saw, which is what one might find in other clinical settings.

The donor in question appeared to be an older woman. Her remains had been embalmed.

Simply put, “the body has been preserved with a chemical solution, and that allows for the tissues to be locked in a certain way,” Pulciani said.

The story that the body told

“There was a knee replacement,” said John Webster, a California-based medical massage therapist who said he has attended seven other dissection workshops in his career.

“In particular, there was a long discussion about the differences in muscle structure in the hamstrings, and that’s what led to the discovery of that knee,” he said via Zoom. “There were two different muscle structures in both legs because one clearly had had a bad knee, and she’d been dragging that leg,” he concluded.

Webster said discoveries like that help inform his work as a massage therapist.

“Well, certainly, if I ever have anybody with a knee replacement, that will be a vivid picture for me to check and see if I can feel a difference between muscle structures, and would certainly give me a lot of areas to work on, if somebody ever has that particular surgical replacement in their body,” he said.

During the course of the workshop, we discovered that the donor also had a replacement shoulder joint.

We never knew the woman’s name, so we agreed to call her “Adele.” We also didn’t know her age or how she had died. I concluded she may have enjoyed pampering herself as her toenails had been painted.

Where the bodies come from

“So we work with a number of sources. We have a direct donor program where we work with local funeral homes who know us and know who we are, and they work with local people who are interested in donating their bodies to procure them for us and bring them in to us,” said Pulciani.

The lab also receives donor cadavers through university sources or from people whose dying wish is to donate their body so that others may learn from them. He said the donors include people “that we know or are connected to people that we know because we work with the local community.”

Pulciani acknowledged he would donate his body to the institution even though his friends would be “picking through it.” Pulciani said this is a shift from a few years ago when he would have been hesitant to do so. Pulciani said he has refined his understanding of death and his body and what that means to him.

Wrapping up and returning to the living

At the end of each day, the donor’s body was stored away and the workspace, instruments, and floors cleaned thoroughly. The lab coats were laundered in a washing machine.

On the last day of the workshop, as we prepared to go our separate ways, one of the participants placed flowers in the donor’s right armpit. It was a form of closure, to thank the donor for her service and for being our teacher.

What happens to a body once the lab is done with it? It is collected and cremated.

Given the intensity of a dissection exercise, Pulciani said he decompresses by making ample use of a hot tub at home. He also said he likes to spend time with his two dogs and three cats, drink a cup of tea, watch birds frequent his home’s feeders and walk around the wide-open spaces and mountains in Colorado. 

Sources: Mental Floss: Everything You’ve Ever Wanted to Know About Donating Your Body to Science, by Emily Petsko (May 31, 2019)

Popular Science: What happens when you donate your body to science? By RJ Mackenzie (Nov. 24, 2024)

Institute for Anatomical Research website: anatomicalresearch.org

Copyright 2025 - Candace Williams – All Rights Reserved