Chapter 106: We Do Dissections Too [2] —Riiip.
First, Kanghyeok made a cross-shaped incision: from above the navel down to just above the pubic bone, then across both flanks.
Since almost all the blood had already been drained, no blood came pouring out the moment he cut.
"Now then, let's first look at this cross-section."
Kanghyeok showed the group the cut section of the abdominal skin he had opened.
At the same time, someone quickly darted out of the room.
"Ugh."
Unexpectedly, it was Makbong.
He had been perfectly fine hanging the corpse up and draining the blood.
Yet now he was strongly proving that he was, surprisingly, a man of delicate sensibilities.
—Clatter.
The firmly shut warehouse door shook violently, and the sound of someone retching could be heard outside.
It was enough to make even the others, who had been holding up well, start to feel nauseated.
It was clearly a hindrance to the dissection.
But Kanghyeok did not bother getting angry.
This was by no means the first time he had seen such a thing.
In fact, he had even seen fellows who performed surgery just fine freeze up completely once they entered the anatomy lab.
"Hmm."
Kanghyeok paused briefly and looked around at the group.
Let's see. The ones holding up fine are... Heo Jun, Heo Im, Yeoni... oh, Dolseok?
That fellow, who was normally so timid, now looked entirely composed.
It was a striking contrast with Makbong, who had just fled with his face drained of color.
On closer look, Dolseok was even wearing a faint smile, probably already looking forward to mocking Makbong about this later.
Yeoju's barely holding on. Well, yes, if the painter collapses here, that'd be a problem for me too.
After all, it would not do to conduct every dissection lesson in exactly the same way.
He had to leave some kind of record behind if they were going to move on to the next step.
"I forgot to say this earlier. It'll probably smell a bit... and it may be more grotesque than you expected. If that happens, you can step out and vomit like Makbong did, but if possible, leave before that or turn your head away."
"Yes. Understood."
"And... let's each plug our noses with some cotton at least. This is my first time handling a cadaver that hasn't been treated with formalin too, and the smell is rather foul."
No one among them knew what formalin was.
How could they? This was Joseon.
And had it not been invented in Germany besides?
But no one objected.
By now, they were already used to Kanghyeok occasionally saying strange things, and besides, that was not what mattered at the moment.
"Mm. It's a bit better with the cotton in."
Heo Jun said that with pieces of torn gauze stuffed into both nostrils.
It made a mockery of yangban dignity, but it could not be helped.
The smell of a corpse that had already begun decomposing was far too offensive to endure as it was.
"Exactly."
Kanghyeok replied as he stuffed gauze into his own nostrils.
At the same time, hazy memories of the anatomy lab came back to him.
Back then, when working with formalin-treated cadavers, I hated that smell so much... but I see now why they treated them with it.
In truth, formalin was not exactly a good substance.
If one had to define it in a single phrase, it would be this:
A colorless toxic substance with a harsh, irritating odor.
It had even been designated a Group 1 carcinogen.
So just imagine how intense that smell was.
To make matters worse, one day when Kanghyeok had been doing his training, one of the ventilation ducts broke, and it had truly been hell.
Those were the days when just stepping inside made tears stream down his eyes.
Even then, I still threw myself into it gladly.
Was anatomy not so difficult when seen only in books?
But during practice, those structures would lodge themselves into the mind in vivid three-dimensional form.
He had never forgotten that electrifying experience, and now he wanted to give the same thing to his companions.
Once he confirmed that everyone had plugged their noses, Kanghyeok pulled back the abdominal skin flap again.
"Now then, if you look here... the outermost layer is the skin. Thinner than you'd expect, right?"
"Yes."
"And the yellow beneath it is fat. This person's layer is very thin... probably because he wasn't properly fed."
"Then is the red beneath that muscle?"
"That's right. Yeoni's sharp. This person's muscle layer is very thin too. Well... he probably never had the chance to build abdominal muscles. And he was far too old besides."
Clicking his tongue in pity, Kanghyeok let the abdominal skin fall back down.
Then he picked up the scalpel again and continued.
"Now I'm going to cut through the peritoneum and go in... but I think the smell may get a bit worse. The intestines decompose very quickly."
"Yes, we're prepared."
Heo Jun and Heo Im nodded with their eyes wide open.
It was clear that they were determined not to miss a single thing.
Kanghyeok, on the other hand, was unable to move his hand as readily as before.
This was his first time opening up a cadaver that had not been preserved with formalin.
I wonder what the smell will be like... it should still be manageable, right?
Even if the time Dolseok and Yeoni began CPR was counted as the time of death, not even an hour had yet passed.
Let's hope so.
For one of the rare times in his life, Kanghyeok called on the heavens inwardly as he moved the scalpel.
Naturally, the incision itself could not help but be rather rough.
This was not an incision meant to save a person, but one made for the purpose of confirming as clearly as possible what was inside.
—Riiip.
As Kanghyeok's blade moved, the tightly sealed peritoneum slowly opened.
Inside, the organs that had already lost all signs of life came into view.
The one that differed most clearly from a living person's was, as expected, the large intestine.
It seemed the intestinal bacteria had already begun to multiply and release gas.
Judging from the fact that it was swollen to nearly one and a half times its normal size.
"Mm... it normally doesn't look like this. In any case, look here. You see this large tube running parallel?"
"Yes."
"This is the large intestine leading to the anus... and if you look closely, you'll see the part where it bends downward on this person's left side. Stool moves in the direction I'm pointing."
"Ah... I see. Then this is effectively the final digestive organ."
"That's right. As expected of Teacher Heo. If I leave this as it is, it'll rot far too quickly, so I'll remove it first."
"Yes, yes."
Instead of cutting it immediately, Kanghyeok first tied off both ends of the large intestine with thick thread.
If he cut it just like that, the waste matter and gas packed inside would come spilling out.
That'd be a total disaster... and then we wouldn't even be able to continue the dissection.
Was this not the hard-won corpse of an unclaimed body?
He could not let it go to waste pointlessly.
As he tightly tied it so that nothing inside could leak out, something protruding like a pig's tail became visible from the right side of the intestine.
It was the appendix, commonly but incorrectly called the cecum.
"Ah, Dolseok. This is what I cut out back when Okseok was sick."
"Oh... it's really small. Back then it was huge."
"Okseok's got blocked at the opening here, so it swelled up. Normally, it's about this size."
"That's fascinating."
Dolseok truly did seem fascinated, just as he said.
The corpse before his eyes did not seem to frighten or disgust him at all.
It was a completely different look from the others, who were only forcing down their discomfort by relying on curiosity.
Unexpectedly, the one most likely to become a great physician out of all of them might be Dolseok.
With an approving heart, Kanghyeok nodded and fully removed the large intestine.
Then the small intestine that had been hidden beneath it came into view.
Twisted and winding, it looked like a coiled snake.
"It's much thinner and longer than the earlier one, right? This is the small intestine. In fact, most of the nutrients from the food we eat are absorbed here. To be precise, this too is divided into three sections... but that distinction doesn't mean much clinically, so we'll just pass over it."
With that simple explanation, Kanghyeok removed the small intestine as well.
The rest of the abdominal dissection proceeded in much the same way. He directly showed them organs such as the stomach, spleen, kidneys, and pancreas, and briefly explained their functions.
"Now then... let's move up to the right side here. You see this large one?"
Kanghyeok pointed to a large triangular organ.
Normally it should have looked red, but because he had drained so much blood earlier, it appeared somewhat pale.
"This is the liver. The liver stores the energy our body needs... mm... that is, the strength we need to move. It's also the organ that detoxifies poisons. Hm?"
Kanghyeok had been continuing his explanation as he always did, but then the hand feeling over the liver stopped.
"What is it?"
Heo Jun asked, his eyes round.
Perhaps he had already grown accustomed to the dissection in such a short time, because the pained expression he had worn at first was nowhere to be seen.
Though in large part that was thanks to the fact that the foul odor had diminished after the large and small intestines were removed.
"No, this person had a problem with the liver. Now, if you look here... you see this rounded thing settled inside?"
"Ah, yes. Is that not normally there?"
"That's right. A liver should normally be smooth."
"Oh ho."
Yeoju's hand, working behind them, moved faster too.
After all, abnormal findings were more interesting to draw than normal ones.
Kanghyeok exposed the liver fully and placed it atop the chest.
This is the sort of thing you could never even dream of doing with a living person.
After all, the moment you removed the liver, death would be certain.
Pushing aside thoughts that were not important right now, Kanghyeok looked around at the group.
All of them were staring fixedly at the liver.
"Now then. This round thing sticking out here. This is what we call cancer."
"Cancer?"
This time it was Dolseok who asked back.
His eyes were sparkling, quite unlike his usual self.
"Yes. Cancer. Even the name alone sounds ominous."
"So where did such an ill-omened thing get in from?"
Dolseok seemed to be mentally retracing the steps of the dissection.
Surely there had not been any noticeable hole before the cutting began.
And this lump looked almost as large as a fist.
After pondering for a long while, Dolseok suddenly cried out as if he had realized something.
"Did it go in through the throat...?"
"Well, I can't say that's absolutely impossible."
"That does seem like the only way something like this could get in."
Even Heo Jun and Heo Im joined in and began talking nonsense in agreement.
Well... this is an era that believes everything inside the body is complete as it is...
At that remarkable misunderstanding born of ignorance, Kanghyeok fell silent for a moment.
The awkwardness caused by the teacher's silence slowly began to spread through the warehouse.
"Is that not it?"
As expected, the first to realize they were wrong was Heo Jun.
Kanghyeok slowly nodded and resumed explaining.
"It's an interesting theory, but no, that isn't it."
"I see."
"What we call cancer was originally liver tissue, but as a person ages, something changes and mutates."
"Then this too was originally just liver?"
"That's right. It turned into this bad thing. In fact, it's possible this person died because of this."
"Heo... can that really happen?"
As expected, it was difficult to make them understand cancer immediately.
To do that, he would first have to start with cells, then go on to things like telomeres and mutations.
And it doesn't seem like such an important problem in Joseon anyway.
Had cancer not only emerged as a major problem in human history around the mid-twentieth century?
In other words, cancer became a problem only once people stopped dying so easily of everything else.
This was still an era overflowing with other reasons to die, so there seemed little point in explaining it in detail.
I'll just leave it at telling them such a thing exists.
Kanghyeok quickly moved the liver into a basket.
"It's an extremely rare illness, so let's move on for now. There are still a great many structures we need to see."
"Yes, yes."
"Then shall we move on to the chest next... hm?"
Kanghyeok was just about to pick up the scalpel again when someone began pounding violently on the warehouse door.
"Young Master, Young Master!"
"What is it, Makbong? You startled me. What's going on?"
"The displaced people who settled near Bojewon a little while ago are having diarrhea... it's absolute chaos. The people with them too, all of them... Dongpa says he's going, but we can't just send that bastard alone, can we?"
Dongpa surely meant the quack.
If that bastard went, they would all definitely die.
"That won't do. All right. Uh... then let's finish up here first, and go."
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