"When I first went to work, the smell was really unacceptable, and once I got on my body and took a bath ten times, I couldn't wash it off."
This is a self-description by a human herbarist. In China, a country with a long history, people's thinking is still relatively traditional.
Chinese not only pay attention to the safety of entering the soil, but also pay attention to burying in the ancestral grave, which is called the fallen leaves and returns to the roots.
Although cremation has now been fully covered, there are still some people who require the integrity of the body to be preserved at the time of burial in order to be "completely" reincarnated in the next life.
Figure 1
Therefore, in China, donating the body after death for scientific research is unacceptable to most people, and in their view, it is a very undignified thing to be touched and studied after death.
This has led to the scarcity of specimens of remains in Our country, and the scarcity of herbarists who make them is even more scarce.
What about the daily work of a real human herbarist? What is the unique insight of herbarists on the meaning of death and life?
Overcome fears
Disinfection, cutting, boiling, splicing this is the daily life of the human body herbarist Wang Yao, in the outsiders seem to be very obscure work, Wang Yao did a good job.
Don't look at Wang Yao doing it so easily, in fact, it is funny to say, Wang Yao, who has just gone to work, has been frightened countless times. After joining the company in 2008, Wang Yao's first job was an old man.
Wang Yao also vividly remembers that it was a summer evening, and Wang Yao and his colleagues were preparing to move the old man to the ice coffin in the mourning room for the family to mourn.
Figure 2
This was the first time that Wang Yao had completed all the processes independently, so Wang Yao was particularly nervous. Unexpectedly, just after pulling out the body bag, I heard a faint murmur coming from the body bag: "Nam no Amitabha, Amitabha..."
This murmur was pitifully small, Wang Yao even thought that he had heard wrongly, and his colleague had the courage to gradually put his ear close to the body bag, "Amitabha, Amitabha..." Yes, there is indeed a sound, and this time both of them really listened.
At this time, the herbarium seemed more and more eerie and quiet, looking at the increasingly dim sky outside the window, Wang Yao and his colleagues were frightened and stunned. Wang Yao was an atheist and never believed in the theories of these cattle, ghosts, and snake gods.
Wang Yao did not say a word to pull the old man's body bag directly open, looking at the old man's pale and sunken face in the body bag, Wang Yao was still relieved, and then looked at the old man's chest, it turned out to be a radio, and these low great compassion spells were issued by it.
"Fortunately, I thought I was evil, so don't scare yourself."
Wang Yao, who was in a false alarm, silently comforted himself in his heart. Obviously, this is put by the family, must be wanted to overdo the deceased elderly or something, may have just been moved when accidentally touching the button of the radio to cause this "thrilling" scene.
Don't look at Wang Yao's mouth saying that he doesn't believe in ghosts and gods, but he is really scared and afraid of the soul.
Figure 3
Once Wang Yao was alone in the herbarium disposing of two corpses, and Wang Yao, who was already very skilled at that time, was no longer very afraid, so even if one person handled two corpses, it was easy.
It took less than three or five strokes to pack up the first body, and Wang Yao turned his head and began to dispose of the second body. But what Wang Yao did not expect was that just halfway through, he felt a hand gently brush over his waist, frightening Wang Yao to throw the knife in his hand to the ground with a bang, and then ran without thinking much about it instinctively.
Running all the way to the door and looking at the noonday sun, Wang Yao had a sense of happiness for the rest of his life.
Wang Yao, who took two deep breaths, gradually calmed down, and Wang Yao, who had calmed down, thought carefully about when he had touched himself. With a strong curiosity, Wang Yao carefully returned to the herbarium.
After a closer look, Wang Yao was amused by himself, it turned out that when he handled the first corpse, he did not put his arm well, causing his arm to slip down from the processing table, just touching his waist, which made this laugh.
These "things that scared themselves" during his work had happened countless times to Wang Yao, and gradually Wang Yao had become immune to these things. He often comforted himself in his heart that "do not do bad things, and are not afraid of ghosts knocking on the door."
Figure 4
The hardships of the profession
In fact, when I first started doing this work, my family members didn't quite understand Wang Yao, and they felt hard and obscure. Not only did the family not understand, but even when outsiders heard that Wang Yao was dealing with corpses, they were frightened and retreated.
When Wang Yao decided to enter this profession, he did not have any touching and profound love, just because of the cheesy reason - to earn more. In addition, there is basically no fixed rest time, and it can even be said that it is not open all year round.
But then again, although the profession of human herbarist is hard, it has to be said that because of scarcity, it is really earned. To this end, Wang Yao, who worked as a floor manager at Sichuan University for several years, decided to change his career and start working as a human herbarist.
When he joined the company, Wang Yao was already forty years old, and the only bit of medical knowledge was the little skin that he had been exposed to when he was a floor manager a few years ago. Therefore, after a few months of teacher Fu's belt, Wang Yao began to officially take up his post.
Although the technical content requirements are not high, this profession is extremely demanding for psychological quality.
As for the state of the body, as a specimen maker, it is impossible to predict, so whether it is highly decomposed or intact, Wang Yao must accept it all.
Figure 5
Although Wang Yao had seen many "big scenes", every time he encountered a decomposing corpse, Wang Yao would still be shocked.
Wang Yao can often see those who have been swollen for many days after death, and emit a smell that makes people retreat, and there will be maggots under the skin after a long time, and whenever Wang Yao sees the corpse so "wolf" scene, he can't help but sigh in his heart: When the body is alive, it will definitely not want to die like this. And then the human herbarist showed his usefulness.
White coats, protective clothing, rubber boots, protective masks... This set of processes is a compulsory course for Wang Yao before each work. Faced with such a highly decomposed corpse, Wang Yao could only make it into a human bone specimen. Making human bone specimens is a laborious task that requires a lot of patience.
First of all, Wang Yao should finely remove every inch of muscle tissue on the human bone, and then saw the skull open, take out the brain tissue inside, and finally put these bones into a large pot to boil it carefully, according to the bone situation Wang Yao needs to adjust the heat and time according to experience to ensure that this human bone specimen is complete and strong.
Of course, the body tissue that was removed during the production, Wang Yao will also integrate it into one piece, send it to the crematorium for cremation and final burial, from the beginning to the end Wang Yao must ensure that every part of the donor's body is properly handled.
This set of processes ensures that few people can stand it, I believe that at the moment of opening the body bag, normal people can't help but vomit, not to mention the next close deboning and boiling. Just describing and imagining it already makes people feel numb.
Figure 6
I believe that people have seen the nature of such work, and how strict the requirements for psychological quality are, in fact, Wang Yao is also an ordinary person, and Wang Yao will also have strong discomfort in the face of such a "stimulating" scene, but professional quality absolutely does not allow Wang Yao to make a disgusted move towards the body.
Friends who have seen animal carcasses may know that the smell of decomposing corpses is endless for three days, and the smell is like piercing power, even with ten layers of masks, corpse odor can pass through the obstacles, sneak into the nasal cavity and hit the brain door.
This is also the reason why many people who "die alone" in the room can eventually be discovered. Therefore, Wang Yao, who just started working, often accidentally rubbed formalin on his body because his hands and feet were not skilled, and this taste was very unique, as long as he was stained with a star and a half, how to wash it could not be washed.
This caused Wang Yao's body to often be filled with this smell, so that when he ate and slept, he could think of corpse odor, which brought great trouble to Wang Yao's life. With the passage of time, the later Wang Yao gradually became accustomed to this smell, and even if he smelled the smell of corpses, he could not be alarmed and dry two bowls of rice.
Reflections on life
In addition to bringing Wang Yao a high salary, the profession of human specimenist has brought Wang Yao another kind of thinking about life in a sense.
In Wang Yao's career, he has seen too many life and death partings. Although people are gone after death, the family's attitude towards their body is very different.
Figure 7
Take two body donors, the first elderly person is a donor that Wang Yao accepted in 2015. That day, after receiving the news of the old man's death, Wang Yao and his colleagues drove as usual, but as soon as they entered the door, Wang Yao and his colleagues were stunned, because the ground was full of human excrement, making it impossible for people to get off their feet, and then looking at the dry and thin old man paralyzed in bed in the distance, it was difficult to imagine how the old man lived in such an environment.
But bigger surprises are still to come. When Wang Yao and his colleagues lifted the quilt covering the old man's body, they found that they could not be opened at all, because the pressure ulcers caused by the old man's perennial paralysis were not properly treated, resulting in the wound being inflamed and pus, and the dried up pus and the quilt on the body were closely linked.
This made Wang Yao feel very unhappy in his heart, although the heart was surging but the basic professional quality was still there, Wang Yaoqiang endured the sour heart to carefully separate the old man from the quilt, because the adhesion area was relatively large, Wang Yao let the old man's son standing next to him help.
But what Wang Yao didn't expect was that the old man's son waved his arm and muttered to himself, "Dirty dead, dirty dead, disgusting dead who wants to touch it." ”
This scene made Wang Yao feel very speechless, and of course the final prayer ceremony was not done, and the old man's son was eager to solve this "trouble" as soon as possible, for fear of staying in this home for one more second.
Figure 8
After all, such people are still a minority, and Wang Yao has not encountered several in his career.
But the same body was donated, and another donor still left a deep impression on Wang Yao, that is, a fifty-year-old middle-aged aunt who was paralyzed in bed like the previous old man.
Because of a car accident when he was young, he was highly paralyzed in the lower limbs and lay at home for nearly thirty years, but this aunt did not have a little pressure sore on her body, and it is conceivable how much energy was spent on the aunt by the family who took care of the aunt. The aunt was taken care of by her own brother's family, and since she was in a car accident at the age of twenty-one, she has been cared for by her brother.
Even if the brother is married, he still takes care of his sister as usual, and this perseverance is difficult not to sigh. Facing his peaceful sister and brother, he said:
"Over the years, I have taken good care of it, you see this body is clean, every day to rub her whole body and then turn over to do a massage, when the sun is good, I still push her out to go out for a walk and sunbathe, so there is no pressure sore on the body."
When sorting out the remains of his aunt, Wang Yao found that what his aunt's brother said was not false, and after his death, his aunt not only did not have a little dirt on his whole body, but even his hair was washed clean and neatly and neatly coiled behind his head.
Figure 9
Scarce market
The above two experiences have made Wang Yao sigh all the time, although science has not confirmed whether people are conscious after death, but no matter what, those who are treated well after death are more or less smiling.
As a human specimenist, Wang Yao's duty is only to deal with the remains, and he can handle more than 50 donated remains in a year, and wang Yao does not have much qualifications to judge the right and wrong of his life, all he can do is to treat each donated body gently and carefully.
China is a relatively traditional country, if you push forward ten or twenty years, no one is willing to donate their remains after death, which also leads to the development of medical experiments in China is difficult.
Although it is now the twenty-first century, the number of human remains donated is still in short supply, although it is increasing year by year.
Fortunately, however, there are now many elderly people who have received body donations. In the past two years, Wang Yao has met an elderly couple, childless and childless, who have signed a body donation agreement for each other.
The couple has an open-minded mind far beyond that of modern young people, believing that donating the body can not only contribute to national medicine, but also have someone to properly dispose of it after death, which is the best of both worlds.
In the months after the signing of the agreement, the husband and wife both died, and when Wang Yao heard the story of the couple when dealing with the bodies of the two, a sense of awe rose from his heart.
Figure 10
For those who volunteer to donate their bodies, instead of making their bodies rot in a dark coffin, and then ten years and a hundred years later no one remembers themselves, it is better to donate their bodies to contribute to the national medical cause, which is also a continuation of life for them.
Respect the donor
Many students who study medicine should know that no matter what school or major, there is an unwritten rule when taking the human body planing class. Before the class, the teacher will make repeated orders to the students, ask for respect for the body, and honor the body as the general teacher.
Then the students themselves will deconstruct the position of each organ, the structure of every inch of the muscle. And every time he saw this scene, Wang Yao would rise up a sense of pride from the bottom of his heart.
Wang Yao knew that many years later, before he was about to die, he would also sign a "voluntary donation agreement for his body" and then lie calmly on the untouched bed for future generations of students to observe and study.