Monday, March 03, 2008

Autopsies - Not For The Squeamish!

Can you handle going to an autopsy?

I remember back in the 70's, there was a TV show called "Quincy." Quincy was played by Jack Klugman (of the "Odd Couple" fame.)

Well, Quincy had an opening to his show that had a bunch of rookie police officers standing in front of the autopsy table ready to see their first autopsy. I recall Quincy saying something like, "Welcome to the facinating world of Forensic Science..." then he'd pull back the sheet that was over the body and then one by one, the cops would faint from what they saw. It was a hoot!

Well, autopsies are actually quite interesting. As many of you know, I had gone to many of these because I had studied and worked in Law Enforcement in the past as an Evidence Technician. I remember at my first autopsy, I was totally facinated by what I saw. Looking down at the body on the examination table with all of the "insides" of the body taken out and the rib cage removed, the body was just a shell. Never saw that before! By the way, the rib cage is removed by cracking the ribs using huge gardening cutters... like the ones you see when you have to cut down tree branches. I'm not kidding!

It takes a while to get used to, I suppose. But after several autopsies, it wasn't quite as shocking as you might have thought it would be. Today, you can see "fake" autopsies being done on the show "CSI" or the now defunct show, "Crossing Jordan." They are showing a lot of things like this on TV today. No way would something like this be shown in the past!

Is it gross? Sometimes. Decomposition isn't pleasant and I've smelled that before. I think that's the worst part about it. But if it wasn't for that, I don't think it's any big deal.

Sorry to gross you all out on this post. But I haven't thought about or written about my forensic past in a while...

No comments: