Cadavers, again!
Oct. 5th, 2004 08:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninevirtues(Reprinted from snopes.com--- they had a good section on urban legends of medical school)
Origins: This story was well known even back in the 1920s, proving yet again even the oldest of tales can send shivers down a reader's spine.
The "cadaver arm" stands apart from all other body-parts-used-in-a-prank stories because of the victim's reaction (madness) and the expression of that reaction (she eats the arm). In the other tales of this genre, victims might faint, scream or even have a heart attack when they discover themselves in the presence of an unattached body part, but in none of them do they go mad. That fate is always reserved for the girl who finds an arm in her bed.
There are numerous "cadaver parts and medical students" legends in existence, with the typical plot of them being a corpse or its parts are shanghaied by a medical student (possibly with the help of his buddies) and used to scare the bejeezus out of people. Undoubtedly, some of these stories are true and the events as described did indeed happen at least a couple of times. However, it should be pointed out that most of these stories have long since passed into the realm of lore, with each new class of medical students being told this prank or that was played out right in this very medical school just last term. Some of the more common of these tales are:
A group of medical students makes off with a corpse's hand, carries it to a bus stop, boards a bus, and extends the hand with the fare in it to the driver.
A cadaver arm with a quarter in its upturned palm is extended to the toll taker at a booth a carload of medical students is stopped at. The unsuspecting toll taker is left holding the arm as well as the coin.
A medical student drops a stolen hand into an unsuspecting woman's shopping bag.
A student stands at a urinal seemingly taking a whiz. When another man comes to stand beside him, the student rips off 'his' penis and flings it into the bowl, announcing, "It never did work anyway" before marching off.
Medical students shake hands through a train window, leaving one holding the arm of the other, to the horror of the porters and everyone else on the platflorm.
A severed head wired for sound makes personal comments whenever someone walks into the dissection lab.
A cadaver is rigged with electrodes which cause it to jump and start whenever the light switch is flicked on, as the janitor discovers that night.
Believe it or not, there are reasons for these stories -- they play an important role in the metamorphosis of medical students into doctors. The activities as described in cadaver stories represent a way for the student to prove he's triumphed over the cadaver, the confrontation and dissection of which we can imagine must have caused him no small grief. These legends also define medical students as a group apart from the rest in that they've had to handle dead bodies and parts thereof, and this has helped to foster in them the necessary emotional detachment for when they advance to doing the same things to living people. The boundaries between medical students and non-medical students are thus drawn, with the medical students choosing to self-define as emotionally tough and perhaps even a bit callous in the face of the demise of others. They exult in their detachment, celebrating it as proof they were meant to be doctors.
There's also an element of "whistling through the graveyard" in that fellow medical students are expected to laugh at these stories as a way of showing they are not now afraid of going hands on with mortality even if they're still quaking in their boots inwardly at the thought of touching the dead. The ability to find humor in the macabre is a way of (superficially at least) proving oneself tough enough to last in the medical profession. Failure to laugh at these stories is to risk being seen by the rest of the group as a wimp. Note that the same story told to outsiders is expected to prompt reactions of shock and disgust, further defining the difference between being a member of "us" and being one of "them".
Origins: This story was well known even back in the 1920s, proving yet again even the oldest of tales can send shivers down a reader's spine.
The "cadaver arm" stands apart from all other body-parts-used-in-a-prank stories because of the victim's reaction (madness) and the expression of that reaction (she eats the arm). In the other tales of this genre, victims might faint, scream or even have a heart attack when they discover themselves in the presence of an unattached body part, but in none of them do they go mad. That fate is always reserved for the girl who finds an arm in her bed.
There are numerous "cadaver parts and medical students" legends in existence, with the typical plot of them being a corpse or its parts are shanghaied by a medical student (possibly with the help of his buddies) and used to scare the bejeezus out of people. Undoubtedly, some of these stories are true and the events as described did indeed happen at least a couple of times. However, it should be pointed out that most of these stories have long since passed into the realm of lore, with each new class of medical students being told this prank or that was played out right in this very medical school just last term. Some of the more common of these tales are:
A group of medical students makes off with a corpse's hand, carries it to a bus stop, boards a bus, and extends the hand with the fare in it to the driver.
A cadaver arm with a quarter in its upturned palm is extended to the toll taker at a booth a carload of medical students is stopped at. The unsuspecting toll taker is left holding the arm as well as the coin.
A medical student drops a stolen hand into an unsuspecting woman's shopping bag.
A student stands at a urinal seemingly taking a whiz. When another man comes to stand beside him, the student rips off 'his' penis and flings it into the bowl, announcing, "It never did work anyway" before marching off.
Medical students shake hands through a train window, leaving one holding the arm of the other, to the horror of the porters and everyone else on the platflorm.
A severed head wired for sound makes personal comments whenever someone walks into the dissection lab.
A cadaver is rigged with electrodes which cause it to jump and start whenever the light switch is flicked on, as the janitor discovers that night.
Believe it or not, there are reasons for these stories -- they play an important role in the metamorphosis of medical students into doctors. The activities as described in cadaver stories represent a way for the student to prove he's triumphed over the cadaver, the confrontation and dissection of which we can imagine must have caused him no small grief. These legends also define medical students as a group apart from the rest in that they've had to handle dead bodies and parts thereof, and this has helped to foster in them the necessary emotional detachment for when they advance to doing the same things to living people. The boundaries between medical students and non-medical students are thus drawn, with the medical students choosing to self-define as emotionally tough and perhaps even a bit callous in the face of the demise of others. They exult in their detachment, celebrating it as proof they were meant to be doctors.
There's also an element of "whistling through the graveyard" in that fellow medical students are expected to laugh at these stories as a way of showing they are not now afraid of going hands on with mortality even if they're still quaking in their boots inwardly at the thought of touching the dead. The ability to find humor in the macabre is a way of (superficially at least) proving oneself tough enough to last in the medical profession. Failure to laugh at these stories is to risk being seen by the rest of the group as a wimp. Note that the same story told to outsiders is expected to prompt reactions of shock and disgust, further defining the difference between being a member of "us" and being one of "them".
