LONDON, Dec. 10 (Xinhua) -- Within days of student Giri Nandakumar arriving at Britain's famous Cambridge University, he followed in the footsteps former students have been experiencing for 450 years.
He took part in a tutorial which meant being introduced to his first ever dead body.
It was Queen Elizabeth I who paved the way for the university to be allowed dead bodies to be used for medical dissection, a practice that continues to this day.
The young student had barely had time to unpack before entering the dissection room at the start of his journey to become a doctor.
He came face-to-face with a tutor of a very different kind -- a donated, dead body, known as the silent teacher.
"I feel like I'm in a bit of a daze at the moment as to what just happened," recalled Nandakumar.
"I have never seen a dead body before. The complexion, the expression of the face, the position they're in, this was all quite new to me."
Some students faint at the sight of a human body about to be cut open in the name of science.
Dr. Cecilia Brassett, head of Human Anatomy Teaching, said students are encouraged to see their donor as their first patient and their silent teacher.
"Although entry into the dissection room is emotionally challenging, it does develop their professionalism in a way that teaching using models and images does not," Dr. Brassett said.
Brassett says even the students who faint quickly become accustomed to their new way of studying.
It was John Caius who introduced dissection work to Cambridge in 1565, remembered to this day with the name of the university's Gonville and Caius College.
"Caius was always keen on medicine, and in particular the study of anatomy," said Professor David Riches from Gonville and Caius College.
"Caius was always keen on medicine, and in particular the study of anatomy. So when Queen Elizabeth I visited Cambridge in 1,565, he obtained from her a decree to obtain two cadavers (dead bodies) each year for dissection purposes."
Caius stipulated the bodies -- some of them almost certainly convicts -- were treated with dignity and respect, Prof . Riches said.
Anatomy at Cambridge now sits within the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience.
According to a university spokesperson, just under 300 students a year study this as part of their medical education at Cambridge University.
Lynn Haythorpe, Bequeathal Secretary at the university who has the job of speaking to potential donors, receives around over 1,000 expressions of interest each year, with the University receiving up to 50 bodies.
The bodies that come to the University will be teachers. They'll teach first year medical students human anatomy through dissection, Haythorpe said.
"This isn't a book you take from the library that hundreds of other people will read and you put back. Someone has died and has actually left you their body to look at.
"Throughout their first year the students become very attached to their donors, even protective of them. The whole experience tends to fill the students with awe," Haythorpe added.
Each group of students writes a tribute to the donor. "If I could send my donor a message, the biggest thing I'd have to say is Thank you," Rachel Fox wrote.
Barney Fox wrote, "I'm sure I'll be a better doctor because of the experience."
Cambridge has just celebrated the 450 anniversary of the introduction of human dissections, and this year celebrates the 300th anniversary of the opening in 1,716 of its first Anatomy School.
With a stream of people happy to donate their bodies for medical research, it seems the days of the "silent tutors" are far from over.
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