The Anatomy of Deception - Lawrence Goldstone [5]
When we had all taken our places, the Professor doffed his coat, donned a heavy apron, removed the appropriate implements from the cabinet, and strode to the body. The jauntiness he had exhibited earlier had vanished, replaced by self-assured professionalism.
“We have here what you all can see is a large, powerfully built man, who the note says is German by extraction and was a carpenter by trade. He was admitted to the ward Wednesday last complaining of a cough and swelled feet. Chest measured eighty centimeters, with two-to-five centimeter expansion. Both sides functioned equally, percussion over lungs was normal, and there was nothing special on auscultation.
“After admission, he grew steadily worse, spending most of his time sitting up in bed to ease his breathing. Cough became hacking with expectoration of a bright red color and like currant jelly, dyspnea increasing. Feet became increasingly edematous, expectoration bloody, dyspnea exaggerated. Three nights ago, he became almost insensible with a highly weakened pulse. He was briefly roused with stimulants, but died late Tuesday.”
The Professor grasped the anatomist’s scalpel, larger and heavier than its surgical cousin. “We shall begin by opening the thorax.” Starting at each armpit, the Professor made a deep incision diagonally downward, so that they met at the sternum. He worked smoothly and quickly, the lines straight and true like a draftsman’s. There was a soft hiss as gases were released from the body, and the smell became almost overpowering. Each of us tried to remain stoic, but only the Professor seemed genuinely immune to the stench.
From this juncture, the Professor made a third incision down through the abdominal wall to just above the pubic bone, bypassing the umbilicus, leaving a Y-shaped cut. He then peeled back a fold of skin to either side of the rib cage and one over the face. The carpenter had been dead for thirty-six hours. That, combined with lying in the ice, kept the flow of blood minimal, although it was sufficient to cover the Professor’s hands and wrists. What fluid did escape, I quickly sponged into the channels of the autopsy table.
While the Professor rinsed his hands after the skin had been cleared, I grasped a set of rib cutters, which resembled large garden pruning clippers. I cut through the ribs at the far side of both lungs, just under the skin fold, each snap of the cutters making the sound of a breaking twig. When the ribs were free, the Professor removed the anterior chest wall to expose the organs underneath. From here, most anatomists used the Rokitansky method, extracting all the organs simultaneously after cutting off their connections to the body, but the Professor, although he had studied with Rokitansky at the Allgemeine Krankenhaus in Vienna, preferred the Virchow technique, removing the organs one at a time. Of course, he had studied with Virchow as well.
“The body presents the appearance of a man dead of heart disease,” he began, as Corrigan entered the data into a journal. “There is a small amount of fluid in the abdomen.” Using a siphon, I drew off additional fluid in the lining over the lungs and heart, placing each in a graduated cylinder, which Simpson measured and noted.
“In the right pleura, sixty ounces of clear serum, thirty ounces in the left, and eight ounces in the pericardium,” she reported. The Professor then severed the coronary arteries, freeing the heart, which Simpson removed from the chest cavity and placed on the scale.
“Heart is large,” she said. “Seven hundred ten grams.” The heart was brought to an examining table and the Professor lanced it open. He spoke continuously as he cut, unmindful of the blood and other sera that once more drenched his bare hands, Corrigan scribbling furiously to get it all down.
“Right chamber distended with large, jellylike clots. Ventricle dilated, measuring twelve centimeters from pulmonary ring to apex. Tricuspid orifice dilated fifteen centimeters in circumference. Segments of heart healthy, pulmonary valves normal. Left auricle large and contains blood,