episode_0167

Episode 167. Breath of Life (3)

****

The dissection room was cold today too.

The temperature was deliberately kept low to prevent the corpse from rotting. Combined with the cold weather outside, you could see his breath.

“Yes. Gloves, mask, gown.”

“Yes.”

There were two students who came to the dissection room today. Melissa and Oliver, who I saw in the classroom. Oliver was quiet, and Melissa looked excited.

Graduate students are at the hospital.

“Then. Let’s begin.”

“Where did the body come from?”

“Execution ground.”

“Does the Empire just sell corpses?”

It’s a bit complicated.

Some people just think it’s because they use it for medical research. Some people don’t care about the rights of criminals, especially dead criminals. And some people think prison guards’ salaries are low.

“If you can pay the price.”

Even in modern times, you can buy a corpse if you meet a few requirements. Buying human bones is not illegal. All you need is money.

“What is the purpose of today’s dissection?”

“Respiratory system.”

I nodded.

The corpses of executed people are covered in blood clots, and their condition quickly deteriorates even when placed in a low-temperature environment. Sometimes, they even show signs of lividity.

“Your legs are swollen, man.”

“Well, he died hanging there.”

Blood and body fluids are bound to rush to your feet.

“We will cut out lung tissue to be observed under a microscope and check the macroscopic function of the lung.”

Melissa and Oliver nodded.

****

I heard the extension.

Today’s task was not only to dissect the corpse, but also to teach Melissa and Oliver the process of dissection.

“Melissa is from abroad?”

“Yes.”

“Take a good look at it. When you return to your home country, Ms. Melissa will have to train her students again.”

“Oh, yes!”

Melissa nodded, then dropped her mask to the floor. I looked away. Melissa was hurriedly putting her mask back on.

I picked up a knife.

“Before going to the chest cavity where the heart and lungs are, what should be removed first? ”

“Chest?”

“Clavicle.”

Because the collarbone is above the ribs, you can’t open the ribcage from above without breaking it.

Oliver looked at me over his shoulder.

I removed some of the skin in front of the collarbone, then cut the corpse’s collarbone with pliers. Oliver and Melissa looked at me.

“You guys work over there.”

“Yes.”

“The goal now is to open the rib cage by cutting the ribs from above below the collarbone. To do that, I have to cut open the pectoralis major muscle and cut the ribs from above, right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Be careful not to touch your lungs.”

Last time, I cut the ribs one by one from the rib cage, but this time, since my goal was to see the lungs, I had to be a little more careful. I took the scalpel and cut along the side of the sternum.

“There are seven pairs of ribs attached to the sternum by cartilage, right? We will open the thoracic cavity along these cartilaginous connections.”

“Along the incision line?”

I nodded.

****

The dissection went faster than expected. Oliver was skilled, perhaps because he had done it before. The rib cartilage was easily broken.

Melissa looked a little awkward.

“Can’t you see it?”

“Yes.”

After a long attack on cartilage and bone, I was finally able to open the rib cage, revealing the lungs and heart inside the chest cavity.

With the nauseating smell of blood.

“First of all, what can be known in this state.”

“Uh… ….”

Melissa and Oliver thought about it for a moment.

“Is the lung condition not good? It should be pink, but there’s a lot of black.”

“Aha. Why is that?”

“I don’t know exactly. Maybe he had some bad lifestyle habits? Like smoking or working in a coal mine while he was alive.”

Like miner’s pneumoconiosis or smoking.

“I didn’t know that was visible in the lungs.”

“Because it is a more fragile organ than you think.”

The lungs were clearly visible with accumulated black substances such as tar and coal dust.

“Let’s take it out now.”

I carefully removed the connective tissue attached to the lung and then began to lift the lung out.

Be careful not to rupture your lungs.

“If you look inside the chest cavity, you can see the diaphragm, right? It moves to regulate pressure.”

“I can’t see it?”

“Put your hand in and feel it.”

Oliver did as I told him, putting his hand into the corpse’s chest cavity and feeling the diaphragm.

Although muscles become rigid after death, it was easy to confirm that the diaphragm could move and change the volume of the thoracic cavity.

The lungs were placed on a tray-shaped dissecting dish. The airway was cut below the Adam’s apple. I took out the rubber tube, connected it to the airway of the severed lung, and held it tightly with my hand.

“Melissa. Come blow a rubber tube.”

“Yes.”

“Just exhale.”

“Oh, of course.”

Melissa took off her mask.

It’s common sense, but of course you shouldn’t breathe the air from the lungs of a corpse. It’s not good for your health and it smells terrible.

“After.”

Melissa put her mouth on the rubber tube connected to the dead lung, and the dead lung filled with air.

“I guess the amount a person exhales is similar to the amount they take in? Since there are no muscles, the effects of rigor mortis will be less.”

“Oh, yes.”

Melissa took her mouth out of the rubber tube.

“Try it one more time.”

“That’s really amazing.”

The lungs swelled again. Who knew that these lungs would work even after death?

Perhaps because the weather was cold, the body was better preserved than expected. Like this, the lungs were almost inflated normally.

“Ah. If you had cut it above the vocal cords, you could have shown that you can make a sound.”

“Is that possible too?”

I nodded.

“Look again. There is almost no muscle inside the lungs, and there is no rigor mortis. The lungs repeat the process of inflating and deflating like a balloon to take in outside air, like a machine.”

Melissa put her mask back on.

“Somehow I feel like I can taste blood… … . Anyway, I can see it clearly. I think I understand why you used the balloon analogy during the lecture.”

Oliver was next to me, drawing pictures of the lungs and the process of the experiment. The pictures looked much more elaborate than I had expected.

****

Next order.

“The lungs are divided into three lobes on the right side and two lobes on the left side. Do you know why?”

“Well.”

“Oliver, what about you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Because the heart is on the left, the lungs are asymmetrical because the heart takes up space. That’s why the right side, where the heart is not, has one more lobe.”

“Ah.”

“If the patient I saw last time had not just a ruptured lung but was bleeding uncontrollably, they could have done a lobe resection surgery. The survival rate would have dropped dramatically.”

“I understand.”

It was as if there were already incisions in the lungs. I began to cut open the lungs along the thin lines that separated the lobes of the lungs.

“See this? The bronchi branch into three on the right and two on the left.”

“Yes.”

“The bronchi branch out like a tree as they go down, until they connect into individual alveoli the size of grains of sand.”

“Aha… … . That’s amazing.”

“Go over there and get me a microscope.”

Oliver brought the microscope as I told him to, and I picked up the new scalpel.

“Now we’re going to observe the microscopic structure of the lungs under a microscope. Think of the lungs as being sliced thinner than a piece of paper, and cut them carefully.”

“Yes.”

The microscope is a recently invented instrument.

Since Melissa is a student from abroad, she may not know what a microscope is yet. She may simply not be familiar with it.

Melissa sliced a piece of lung tissue as thin as a sheet of paper and placed it on a microscope slide. I put a drop of blue dye on it and wiped it away with a dropper.

Dry for a few seconds over an alcohol lamp.

“Now. Let’s look at it under a microscope.”

****

Melissa held her breath.

All the explanations the professor gave from yesterday’s class to today’s dissection lab were explanations based on the premise that the microscopic structures of the lungs, which are said to be smaller than a grain of sand, actually exist. Is that really true?

I don’t know.

You can tell right away if you look at it under a microscope.

Whether the microscopic structures in question are real, and whether Professor Asterix’s interpretation is true.

Professor Asterix didn’t look particularly nervous, but since his expression was not visible behind his mask, his attitude was unclear.

The microscope setup was complete, the professor stepped aside, and Melissa put her eye to the eyepiece.

There was no twist.

Professor Asterix was right. The lungs’ microscopic structure was made up of countless tiny chambers, clustered together like grapes.

“Can you see it?”

“I see! That must be the balloon smaller than a grain of sand that the professor was talking about.”

It was a somewhat dizzying sight.

If such small structures fill the lungs, how many grains of sand would it take to fill the volume of the lungs? Millions? Tens of millions?

“Look at Mr. Oliver too.”

Melissa stepped back from the microscope, and Oliver walked up to it and looked at it.

“Oh, there really is a circle. Is that a cross-section of the grapes that are gathered together? Does that mean that the lungs are inflated from here?”

Professor Asterix nodded to Oliver’s question. It was a somewhat comical sight, because of the bird-shaped mask, which made him look like a crow bobbing its head.

“Okay. Then… … . Let’s clean up the body, make a few more lung samples, and head back to the lab.”