Human limbs lie in trays, brown in colour like a roast chicken that has been in the fridge too long. Their skin has been sliced away in neat sections to reveal meaty leg muscles and cylindrical toe bones. The stripped-back fingers on one arm, nails still attached, gather into a dainty bunch as though their owner could be picking grapes.
Students mill around casually in white lab coats, gravitating towards the centre of the vast laboratory where a trainee radiologist is tutoring them on limb joints using X-rays. With few exceptions, only those studying health sciences such as medicine and dentistry, or their mentors, can come here and for them it's just another day in the University of Melbourne dissecting room.
My tour guide, the deputy head of the department of anatomy and cell biology, pauses by a dissected arm with a limp, spaghetti-like tendon dangling loosely from its wrist.
"That's been well dissected. But because the students examine these, from time to time they start to wear away," says Associate Professor Chris Briggs.
Source: The Age Newspaper
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