DrewDad wrote:
I don't have any info on medical examiners. I imagine it might appeal to certain personalities who are detail-oriented and don't like to deal with patients. I mean, all medical interventions are mere delaying actions. Why not go straight to the end result?
Medical examiners are the people who perform autopsys. They get to use fun tools like these:
Bone saw - used to cut through bone or skull
Breadknife - used to shave slices off of organs for examination
Enterotome - special scissors used to open the intestines
Hagedorn needle - a heavy needle used to sew up the body after examination
Hammer with hook - used to pull skull cap off of skull
Rib cutter - special shears used to cut through the ribs
Scalpel - like a surgeon's scalpel but with largest blade possible for making long deep cuts or scraping away tissue
Scissors - used for opening hollow organs and cutting vessels
Skull chisel - used for helping to carefully pry the skull cap off
Stryker saw - the electric saw used to cut through the skull to remove the brain
Toothed forceps - used to pick up heavy organs
Now, would a "normal" person want to do this? THis isn't detail oriented. This can be downright disgusting. Nothing like sawing a persons head open and putting their brain on a scale next to you. Or boiling a skull in order to clean it for face reconstruction? Or having to crack the rib cage of a person to get to their innards?
I thought this was a fun exerpt:
Quote:
We don't always use nice, delicate, surgical tools. If you put the word medical or autopsy on something, the price triples, so ... I can go to a restaurant supply house and get some good knives that cost me just a fraction of what it would cost to buy them elsewhere.
Autopsy tool shopping doesn't stop at the restaurant supply house. The medical examiner may also visit a hardware store for supplies. Dr. Kiesel continues:
... things like pruning sheers tend to work better than surgical bone cutters for cutting through ribs. You know, a scalpel blade's only got an inch, inch and a half worth of cutting surface, whereas you can get a good, long knife that's got a 6-to-8-inch blade on it so you can cut more and faster.
... we're not doing very delicate surgical procedures where we have to worry about if we nick the wrong thing somebody's going to bleed. So, our tools aren't quite that delicate, but we can still do some reasonably sophisticated things ... It's not like doing delicate microsurgery.