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deathunderglass
@deathunderglass

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Forensic pathologists often think about the world in a different way than other people. For instance, take this frontal section of a human head, found in an anatomy textbook – essentially, it’s the B-side of the face, weirdly sinuous and beautiful in its own way. But a medical examiner’s mind goes straight to some alternate places, like the effects of blunt force injury. If I took a two-by-four, or a bat, to someone’s face, what would break first? What are the relative tensile strengths of those structures, and what do patterns of injury mean? And how do I figure out what’s broken? We can do this the easy way, or the hard way. The easy way is to carefully palpate the face, feeling for the signature hollow pop-and-grind of a broken nose or maxilla.  You can feel a broken mandible too (it often breaks in two places, so check both sides carefully). The hard way is to peel the skin back carefully as a flap and directly examine the bones for fractures, better known as a “face peel” – and yes, we put it back. The bones behind your eyes are thin and delicate; you can get a good look at them when you extract the brain. The mandible is much harder to fracture, and the nasal spine is somewhere in between. For more fascinating images of real human anatomic dissections, get yourself a copy of “Color Atlas of Anatomy: A Photographic Study of the Human Body” by  Chihiro Yokochi, E Lutijen-Drecoll, and Johannes W. Rohen. Short of attending an actual autopsy, it’s some of the best anatomic instruction you can find. #forensic #pathology #deathunderglass #facepeel #anatomy #autopsy #itlivesinyourface