preserve a cadaver

I'm just entering my 2nd week of medical school... and as most 1st year medical students are doing, I'm spending at least 3 hours a day dissecting a human cadaver.

This anatomy course lasts 11 weeks, and I'll be working on the same cadaver for all 11 weeks! So your thinking (as was I) that there must be some special method for preserving this body day after day after day, otherwise it would rot and smell.

Possibly it has already been preserved by a specialist who pumped the body full of chemicals?
Nope

Then every night it is submerged in a preserving liquid?
Nope.

So it must be that every night the body is cooled, like in a special freezer or something?
Haha, no.

This is how its done:
Every day, when I'm finished with the dissection for the day, I cover my cadaver with paper towels. I then douse the paper towels with formadehyde, and then lay a small tarp over the top.

Not a very effective method, huh? I can't wait to smell the cadaver lab in late october! After one week its pretty bad in there!

But it's pretty neat that I've held the 4 quadricep muscles in my hand as well as the sciatic nerve (which is as big around as my index finger)... and many other things. So far I've dissected most of the lower limb. On wednesday we start the thorax!