The Changing Role of Dissection in Medical Education

Abstract

played by Cary Grant, is followed everywhere by a large, silent man. The man is with him as he addresses an anatomy class, as he conducts the student orchestra, as he stands over a patient in the operating room. The man speaks only at rare moments, each crucial, coming to Noah's aid as the voice of wisdom, of conscience, or of the past. When Noah is finally challenged by a university tribunal to defend his relationship with the odd man he calls "my friend," the story comes out: the man is a convicted murderer, executed by hanging and sent 20 years earlier to Noah, a medical student who needed "a cadaver of my own." The "cadaver" awakened as soon as Noah stuck a gloved finger in his mouth, and has never since left his side.