The anatomy lab 'meat locker'
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Archived from the IMDb Discussion Forums — Coma
pathologica — 18 years ago(March 29, 2008 06:44 PM)
I assume that storing (an oddly large number of) corpses by hanging them from hooks was a bit of "dramatic license"? Purely for the effect? I can't imagine that this is an actual way of storing bodies for medical research, especially because the rest of the film seems very medically precise.
Does anyone know? -
Rapunzel_in_Van — 17 years ago(July 16, 2008 09:34 PM)
I have the 25th Anniversary hard cover of the book and in it Robin Cook included a letter to his fans. It in he says:
"I certainly enjoyed rereading some of the scenes, like the one in which Susan Wheeler is chased into the anatomy storage locker. It gave me goose pimples all over again. In real life seeing the cadavers hanging up in a similar refrigerator had been the most visually disturbing experience of my first year in medical school."
I guess back in the 1960s when Cook was in medical school they hung them like that. Not sure about today, but I can ask my doctor friend who graduated 3 years ago next time I see her. -
CrystallineBlue — 17 years ago(August 12, 2008 05:14 AM)
Did your doctor friend tell you why the cadavers were hung up like that? - to save space?
I wouldn't have thought a medical school would have such a large quantity of corpses available to work on, just two or three at a time. Perhaps having so many corpses in the movie was for dramatic effect - it was pretty creepy! -
karana_geldar — 17 years ago(December 19, 2008 12:44 AM)
Uh no, it wasn't dramatic effect as there's quite a lot of students that study anatomy at medical schools. Not just those who are going to be doctors but others doing medical-related degrees as well.
I used to live with a few med students, the things they told me about those cadaverssudders
Don't ever donate your body to a med school, whatever you do!
Obi-Wan is my hero! -
Rapunzel_in_Van — 14 years ago(December 19, 2011 10:56 PM)
Did your doctor friend tell you why the cadavers were hung up like that? - to save space?
So sorry for the extremely late reply, lol, but I don't get on here much.
My doctor friend is actually teaching now too and said that before the 1990s, loads of people would actually donate their bodies to science and yes, they were often hung to save space. Not too many people donate their bodies now and she imagines that there are schools who still hang them if they have a lot. -
Dukat-4 — 17 years ago(July 30, 2008 08:52 PM)
It's real, as pretty much anything in the movie that does not take place in the Jefferson Institute.
Both Robin Cook and Michael Crichton, the director, are MDs.
Crichton did his MD in Harvard, and did do student work in the Boston General Hospital, where "Coma" was filmed. Essentially, he used his old school as backdrop, and put in the real "meat locker". It's kinda a medical in-joke. -
HyperPup — 13 years ago(August 26, 2012 07:17 PM)
I imagine there are probably not that many bodies stored in hospitals like that these days but for alot of teaching hospitals, where medical students did work on cadavers this was normal practice. The actual hooks do not injure the flesh, they simply are positioned inside the ear canal where the body has enough structural integrity to hold it up from a hanging position. Medicine is one of the biggest fields of study so it takes many cadavers to teach medical students every year.
Thousands die every day for no reason at all, where's your bleeding heart for them?