For the uninitiated, the dissection room was a waking nightmare. The French composer and former medical student Hector Berlioz jumped out of a window and ran home, later recalling that it was “as though Death himself and all his grisly band were hot on my heels” the first time he stepped into a dissection room. He described an overwhelming feeling of revulsion at the sight of “the limbs scattered about, the heads smirking, the skulls gaping, the bloody cesspool underfoot,” and “the repulsive stench of the place.” One of the worst sights, he thought, was of the rats nibbling on bleeding
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