Students in Michael Raucci’s College Anatomy and Physiology class had a unique lab experience recently: they performed an autopsy on a banana.

 

Dr. Raucci painstakingly put items into each banana to represent different organs – for example, dates were the brain, kidney beans were the kidneys, pasta was the lungs and a cranberry was the heart.

 

 

Students used a scalpel, probe, forceps, scissors, sutures and an electronic scale – the same instruments used by a pathologist during an autopsy on a human. They followed the step-by-step procedure given to them by Dr. Raucci, making initial observations, examining the external evidence, weighing the victim, making the incision and observing the damage to various parts of the body. After documenting their observations and determining the cause of death, the students used sutures to close up the victim.

 

The purpose of this exercise, Dr. Raucci said, was to give the students the opportunity to utilize the instruments and use the vocabulary they have been studying in this lab setting.