Human Cadaver Handling for Dummies

By By elizabeth Ryan 
Published on October 12, 2009
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Nobody ever talks to the cadaver handler. Until now. Cadaver handler Chris Dolph spends his days readying corpses for Stanford’sWilled Whole Body Program, and he tells Stanford all about it. The university processes up to 70 cadavers a year to supply anatomy courses and medical training sessions, and it takes two days and a secret blend of solutions to embalm each body.

“A typical mortuary might use two to three gallons of fluids to preserve a body for a funeral,” Stanford reports, “but Dolph uses up to 25 gallons per body to ensure that each one arrives at the anatomy lab in top condition–even though a body can be held for two years or more before being dissected.” Dolph says he believes his cadavers would even remain unchanged for 300 years, if preserved that long.

Source: Stanford

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