PRACTICAL CONDUCT OF EXERCISE IV 



139 



After the holder has been fixed a pledget of dry cotton wool is laid lightly against the free 

 cut face of the spinal cord between the lips of the clamp, to protect the exposed tissue, a 

 film of clot soon forming under it. The preparation being then lowered horizontally on the 

 table the stem of the clamp itself is fixed horizontally in the clamp of a short brass standard 

 provided with a low flat lead base. The position of the standard on the table is suited of 

 course to the tube from the * blower ' to the trachea. 



Text-fig. 44. Clamp for steadying the neck-stump of the decapitate preparation 

 by holding the atlas vertebra. The points of the small screws in the lips of the blades 

 engage the margins of the body and neural arch respectively. The short standard is 

 set in a lead base. 



To provide thus a preparation for a student's table takes but a short time, requiring 

 longer for description than for execution. The anaesthetization occupies more time than does 

 all the rest of the procedure. Full anaesthetization having been secured previously by an 

 assistant, it is not difficult in 30' to supply five decapitate preparations and place them ready 

 for a class at their five respective tables. The decapitation is preferably made in a side-room 

 attached to the class-room, and the preparations are arranged on the students' tables 

 preferably before the class comes into the class-room. The preparation is a durable one, 

 with ordinary care long out-lasting any requirements of a class. 



Certain conditions are, however, necessary to ensure its lasting properly. Warmth and 

 Ventilation. The carcase tends to cool with corresponding enfeeblement of its reactions. 

 The surface on which it lies should therefore be warmed. This can be secured readily by 

 providing on the student's table a low wooden box with a sheet of tin or copper let into its 

 top wall, the box containing an electric lamp which should be lighted beforehand so as to 

 warm the box before the carcase is placed on it. More convenient than the separate box is 

 an arrangement by which the student's table-top itself includes a warm chamber for the 

 carcase, to lie upon. The student's work-table figured (text-fig. 45) fulfils this and other 

 convenient conditions ; it is that with which my own classes have carried out the exercises 

 both on the decapitate and decerebrate preparations in recent years. It is a simplification 

 of Brodie's table which answers all the class requirements well and is not expensive. A 

 large part of the table-top is formed by the sheet-copper roof of a shallow metal box let into 

 the table. The copper is flush with the table surface, but sinks slightly to a drainage-hole 



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