Prosector

It was the summer of 1987. Shortly before I took the final examination of medical year one, PT - a senior lecturer of anatomy and the tutor of my group - indicated me to stay after the afternoon anatomy class.

He asked if I was interested to do a part-time prosector job during the holiday (not too rare an invitation in those days, when the department was expanding its collection of dissected specimens for teaching and examination).

I was more than eager to agree. To begin with, I have much interest in anatomy; it would be an excellent chance to consolidate my knowledge. Moreover, I was desperately in need of money for the textbooks next year.

A few weeks later, I finished with the examination and (after a brief break) returned to the smelly basement of the Basic Medical Science Building. PT introduced me to Ching, the embalmer at that time, and asked him to take care of me.

Of course I knew Ching for nearly a year - who doesn't after studying his first year of medicine in this university ? He loved to chat with our class when we did the dissection, and he did show us a few mnemonics of anatomy that he brought with him from another medical school. Nonetheless, to many of us, he was a friendly technical staff but nothing more.

To my surprise, Ching was immensely efficient at work. In no time he gave me two newly obtained pelvis and asked me to think what I could do with them.

(To be continued.)

PS. After that summer, PT disappeared in my story. He actually quited his job in Hong Kong a few months later and returned to Britain, where he soon became an eminent professor of anatomy.