Death

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I was a little nervous when we went down into the cadaver lab. I’ve seen dead people before, of course—I’ve been to funerals, and I’ve seen bodies on TV. It’s just that at funerals they aren’t naked with their parts on the table, and on TV there’s a screen—even so, bodies are also liable to get dismembered or turned into zombies or something horrible like that.

But, as I learned… It was okay. Looking back, I’d actually say visiting a cadaver lab was one of the best field trips I’ve ever gone on. Getting to hold all of the organs and see how organs look in a real human body was kind of amazing. A textbook is a great way to learn, but I’ve got to say… nothing beats holding a human heart in your hands.

That’s not to say that sometimes experiencing the dissection wasn’t a little disgusting sometimes, but I got used to it. I really appreciated that our teacher would always warn us before doing something. She’d say something like, “Okay, now I’m going to turn her leg upside down and inside out,” and that was a good enough cue to prepare me for what came next.

We passed around the brain, a kidney, the heart, lungs, tongue, stomach, bladder, entire arm, of the woman—more, even. I got to touch and examine.

Man, I love to touch and examine. If you have drawers or cabinets, I will open the drawers or cabinets. That’s just a rule.

I got to open the human body. It’s interesting, because we often associate life with goodness, and death with badness—but that isn’t the feeling I got from the cadaver lab. This woman was in her 90’s when she died. It sounded like she had lived a pretty decent life before. She had a family. She had a name. And when her time was done, she gave her body to us to explore.

Against all odds, it turns out death is a beautiful thing as well.

Although, I have to say—during our halftime break, a little melody came over the intercom. Our teacher said they play that every time a baby is born inside the hospital.

Death can be beautiful, but there’s still something to be said about being born, too. Go figure.

Science

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Flickr Credit: Dennis Wilkinson

Hello, I have come to do the science.

Oh, the science. What kind of science?

Just the regular kind of science. I’m still an amateur, you know—I don’t want to go crazy with all the calculations just yet. Nothing too complicated!

Well, let me see what’s available. We have “Dropping Cats” in Room 2B, although that one’s rather labor-intensive. Normally I’d recommend “Putting Different Things in the Microwave” or “Poking People While They Nap,” but those are all full. Hm, what about “Mixing Things Together,” as led by our fantastic professor, Walter P. Creshum?

My mother always did say I had a way with a spoon!

Excellent! That’ll be a twenty dollar entrance fee, and if you just take the first corridor to your left it’s straight down the hall in 8L.

Thank you ever so much! Let’s see, here it is. Mixing Things Together?

Yes, yes! Do come in, we were just about to get started!

I see! What are you mixing?

Well, in this bowl I have mixed chocolate chips and toenails, and in this bowl I have mixed a cow’s tongue and hydrochloric acid. I was about to mix them together, and see what happens.

Ah, that does sound fascinating. Any chance I might try mixing things together?

But of course! All the things to mix are just on that counter over there, take anything you like, mix it together, and do let us know if it’s going to blow. Oh, they yelled at me rather severely the last time I shattered the windows.

Absolutely. Now, let’s see. Socks, a must-have. And an old telephone! How quaint. Well, here is some chlorine, and I’ll just take this whisk and weed-killer, and then… Oh, I wonder if they have any sea bass. Hm, sea bass, sea bass, sea bass. There we are!

What are you mixing?

All these things—the sea bass will really hit the spot. And you?

Just some oats, maple syrup, raisins, and a good helping of brown sugar.

Sounds delicious!

No! Don’t—eat it…

This tastes funny… Acgh, what is that?

Well, you didn’t give me a chance to tell you about the laundry detergent, did you?

Why on earth would you put laundry detergent in oatmeal?

Science.

Louis Pasteur

Photo Credit: Britannica

Diseases are great. Diseases are fun! That is, unless you catch them, in which case they are significantly less great and even less fun.

Louis Pasteur is great, and Louis Pasteur is fun—and that’s a definite statement. Known as the god/father of microbiology, Louis Pasteur is probably one of the coolest scientists of the nineteenth century. And, if you’ve ever had a glass of milk, then you have something to thank him for.

In reality, you don’t even have to drink the milk to see it on the carton: down near the bottom there’s a little schpiel that will say “PASTEURIZED MILK” and maybe the grade and some other great facts to help you bond with your milk.

And you’re like, “Great. Leave me alone; I want to blow bubbles in my milk before Dad gets home.”

But hear me out.

If you don’t know anything about pasteurization, let me sum it up for you in simple terms (and we’ll talk about milk, because I know about milk):

• milk has bacteria in it, really gross pathogenic bacteria that makes you sick if you ingest it
• milk men and women take the pathogenic milk and put it in a heater
• we heat up the milk to 154.4 degrees Fahrenheit for thirty minutes
• the heat affects the bacteria that’s present in the milk; the enzymes in the milk are denatured 
• proteins that keep the bacteria functioning are heated into a different shape so they can no longer do their jobs—this is also the reason that you could die from a fever
• the denatured bacteria dies—but some bacteria remains unaffected by the heat
• the pasteurized milk is shipped out, and we keep our milk in the fridge to prevent the unaffected bacteria from spoiling our milk too fast

(Of course, people still drink fresh milk sometimes. They probably don’t die. But, in today’s society where we don’t all own cows and we don’t want to go to the store every day, it works out to take out the bacteria to make it last longer.)

But wait, there’s more.

The thing is, this guy who actually started developing the pasteurization process, Louis Pasteur, was actually a pretty awesome guy—practically a scientific superhero. Check it out.

Louis Pasteur was a chemist, first and foremost, and principal among his interests was germ theory. Back in the day, a popular theory ran around of spontaneous generation: that is, stuff came out of nowhere because God said, “Let there be maggots.” And thus maggots were.

So maggots randomly appeared on meat, food went bad for no reason, and mice came out of dirty underwear (no, I’m serious, we watched this video in Bio Monday morning. It’s worth your two minutes).

Louis Pasteur was like, “Don’t be ridiculous,” and experimented with beef broth to show that there was something in the air that we couldn’t see that made food go bad. He proved it, too: his broth left out to the open air would spoil and turn nasty (I’m sure you’ve left something out too long, too) while the broths that were sealed or swan-necked (twisted over) didn’t spoil nearly as fast.

However, he had more on his plate than mere beef broth. No, Louis Pasteur studied fermentation as well!

I just studied a whole unit on cellular respiration, so I’m not going to give you that speech, but I will say this: if you’ve heard about fermentation, then it’s probably been in relation to one of two things: your sore muscles after you’ve exercised, or beer.

Plot twist, Louis Pasteur actually came up with initial pasteurization processes for wine and beer, not for milk! While studying different organisms that multiply with oxygen (aerobically) or without (anaerobically) in his fermentation studies, Pasteur used his methods to make his alcohol safer to drink.

But that’s not all.

Monsieur Pasteur’s studies in microbiology saved the silkworm industry in France—knowing nothing of silk worms himself, Pasteur spent five years studying silk worms, breeding them, and then coming up with methods to prevent their contamination with harmful microorganisms so that France, not to mention every other country with silk worms, could keep making silk.

And, on top of that, he came up with vaccinations for Anthrax (independently of Koch, by the way), chicken cholera, and rabies.

Yes, rabies. He dried out a bunch of rabid rabbit skulls in his yard and then stuck pieces of their brains in a nine-year-old kid’s stomach. (And that’s still pretty much what they do to you if you get rabies today.)

But, truly, if he were around today, I would give this guy an air five, because apparently he didn’t like to shake hands.

So, what did you learn today?

Sources: Britannica, BBC, Biography.com, LiveScience, FunTrivia, Ducksters, ScienceKids, HowStuffWorks, Britannica (again)