Scrubs, Stethoscopes, and Scalpels- The Life of a Vet Student: Anatomy Round 2

What’s better than cat and dog anatomy? Horse anatomy. Except for the book, horse anatomy (aka comparative anatomy) is so much better. But the book is useless. It doesn’t tell you how to do anything. Luckily, we’ve all retained a little bit of information from last semester, so we’re not completely lost, but I don’t think we retained as much as the book assumes we did.

This course is moving ridiculously fast though... each week we do another body section. We started with the head, and by week two the head was removed (to preserve for us to study later I believe) and we were moving on to the thorax. By week three we were on the abdomen and by week four we were on to the pelvis and the rest of the horse had been sawed off. Besides being intimidated by the fast pace and the amount of information I need to take in each week, I am a little confused about how I’m supposed to go into the lab and study when the majority of my horse is missing.

The main point of comparative anatomy is to highlight the differences between species, and the lab is almost like a just for the hell of it class. The dissection guide has us cutting through muscles and nerves to find deeper structures without any kind of explanation about what we’re cutting through. The motto of our group became “just cut that shit”, especially with trying to get the heart and intestines out. Every point of our dissection is just to note the differences between the horse and what we studied last semester with the dog. And I had heard that the lab portion of this class was really just an “additional learning experience” compared with the mostly lab based class with had last semester with dog and cat anatomy, but this is really just ridiculous. The majority of our first quiz’s questions didn’t have anything to do with actually locating anything on a horse.

And while I actually am really enjoying dissecting a horse because the nerd in me thinks it’s awesome, I’m also annoyed that I spend 10 hours a week looking at things that I probably won’t be tested on, so I have to go back into the lab on my own time and learn everything else that I actually will be tested on. I just don’t get the system.

Plus, these horses weren’t preserved with formaldehyde like the dogs and cats were, so the lab needs to be kept at freezing temperatures in an effort to slow decay. You try carefully cutting through muscle with a scalpel sharp enough to cut through your own muscles a hell of a lot easier than it goes through horse muscles (remember, I know this firsthand) with fingers that you can’t even feel. Not fun.

But what is fun is pulling out a horse’s ascending colon (the first part of the large intestine) and realizing that one segment alone (the right dorsal colon) is thicker than my thigh. Yes, yes, I know I have chicken legs, but it is pretty freaking huge. And the amazing part is that there is almost nothing holding that huge piece of intestine in place inside the abdominal cavity. Horses actually have unique abdominal fascia just to help their abdominal muscles support all the extra weight. That’s also why colic is such a problem in horses though. Out of all of that large intestine the colon is only anchored down in two spots, with the entire left hand side swinging free wherever it wants. I love horses, but that was not the smartest body engineering that I’ve ever seen.

In addition to the horse, we’re also looking at an ox for this comparative anatomy course. I say just looking at because the sides have already been dissected with a couple of ribs removed so you can see the internal organs. We don’t dissect an ox, we just have to know certain things about it. I don’t know what those are yet, but I will figure it out before Thursday’s exam. Hopefully.

I think overall I like this class a lot more than last semester’s dog and cat anatomy, mostly because I’m dissecting a horse, but also because the dissections themselves are a lot less stressful. But I really with that I could get a useful anatomy dissection guide for a change. That would be great.