Mortui Viventes Docent

One of Georgia Southern University’s best hands-on teaching tools for students isn’t prominently displayed on campus.
In fact, many people don’t even know it exists.

“Having this lab is an unbelievable feather in Georgia Southern’s cap,” said Matthew Williamson, director of the human gross anatomy laboratory and a biological anthropologist in the College of Health and Human Sciences’ Department of Health and Kinesiology. “The list of things you can learn from this is endless.”

What makes the lab so unique is a combination of hands-on learning opportunities and high-tech equipment that is unmatched by any other university in Georgia. Rather than the “virtual” study of the human body that many schools across the country conduct, Georgia Southern students learn anatomy by actually working with cadavers.

“Students who use the lab tell me all the time what a huge impact it makes on the work they will do as nurses or community health professionals,” Williamson said. “One student was so moved by her experience in the lab that she went home and told her parents, ‘I held a human heart in my hand!’ She couldn’t believe it.”

The lab is utilized by students in six different majors – pre-nursing, community health, exercise science, pre-athletic training, physical education and nutrition. Students in each of those majors are required to take Georgia Southern’s Anatomy and Physiology I and II lecture and lab courses.

Twelve sections of the human anatomy class are offered per week, with 30 students in each section. The students aren’t limited to just periodic lessons with the cadavers, though; they have several opportunities during the semester.

“For students who want to go into healthcare fields, there is no substitute for this experience,” Williamson said. “No one in the state is better than we are in the undergraduate human anatomy class, in terms of the number of cadavers available and the time the students can spend on them.”

The undergraduate students don’t perform any dissections themselves; rather, they study dissections done by Georgia Southern Health and Kinesiology graduate students. Since bodies and organs won’t always look like the ones shown in textbooks or computer models, the hands-on opportunities – identifying organs, seeing the human variation of them and understanding how those parts work together to form organ systems – are invaluable.

“My experience with Dr. Williamson and the opportunities he provides for his anatomy students have been the defining point of my college career,” said Maureen Ransom, a junior majoring in community health. “With my previous anatomy and physiology experience limited to textbook study, I never imagined that I would be able to gain an up-close, practical knowledge of how the human body functions.”

Ransom took the Anatomy and Physiology I and II courses in the laboratory last year. Each day enabled her to practice the laboratory’s guiding principle, Mortui Viventes Docent, Latin for “the dead teach the living,” the motto posted on one of the lab’s walls.

“While the material was quite challenging, the labs I attended really shed light on what makes a body function,” she said. “With each lab I attended and each model or cadaver I studied, the material became less intimidating and more familiar. I soon found myself eagerly learning not only the material for the test, but also material that went well beyond the testing standards.”

The students conduct their work on downdraft autopsy tables, like the ones used in FBI crime labs. The tables use a vacuum to draw fumes down the table and out the building, reducing the students’ exposure to them, and to drain any fluid leakage.

Since the lab’s inception in 2007 as part of the Herty Building renovation, it has received cadavers on loan from the Medical College of Georgia. The lab has room for 11 bodies at a time – one on each of the five tables and six in the refrigerated storage unit – which can each be used for about a year.

“Everything we do is student-oriented – it’s all for the teaching of our students,” Williamson said.

Lab donors contribute knowledge that betters lives

Last summer, Georgia Southern’s human gross anatomy laboratory received its first direct donation of a cadaver, from a family in another state.

“I wrote a letter to the family explaining the magnitude of that donation,” Williamson said. “The donor’s daughter read the letter at the memorial service, to help the family see the impact that was being made on hundreds or even thousands of students.”

Since then, two more people have pledged to donate their bodies when they die. Such commitments are vital, Williamson said, since all bodies for the lab must be donated or loaned. Paying for cadavers is illegal, he added.

“Ideally we would like to have cadavers donated directly to us, so we can be the first ones to work on them,” said Williamson, who coordinates the University’s body donation program.

Along with benefiting the lab, the body donation program also provides a service to the community. Donating a cadaver to the lab is a viable option for families who cannot afford a funeral. In return, Georgia Southern agrees to cover the cost of embalming and cremating the body.

“We can’t rely on cadaver loans forever and we are grateful to the individuals who have donated thus far,” Williamson said. “This kind of selfless gift has the potential to influence the lives and educations of many, many students – students who will carry this profound experience with them their entire lives and careers.”

— Paul Floeckher