LEARNING MORE THAN SKIN DEEP; TEEN-AGERS GIVEN MEDICAL SCHOOL'S VIEW OF CORPSE.

Byline: Mary Schubert Daily News Staff Writer

The lesson Monday in Pamela King's honors anatomy class was not for the weak-kneed or faint of heart, as Canyon High students donned gloves to cut open and examine a body donated to science.

The high school obtained a cadaver from the medical school at University of California, Los Angeles. Heavily embalmed, the corpse can be used in the classroom for long stretches without the need for refrigeration or special storage, King said.

Despite large fans propped in classroom doorways to improve circulation, the smell of preservation chemicals hung in the air as the teens huddled around the face-down body with the head swathed in a gauzy white netting.

Brian Rudin, a senior at UCLA's medical school, was King's guest lecturer, pointing out the trapezius, rhomboid and other muscles in the right upper back of the anonymous, elderly white man.

``It doesn't really look like a human,'' said Erin Jones, 16, after she used a scalpel to make a vertical incision from the base of the head down to the middle of the back. Rudin then helped the ponytailed junior, wearing goggles and a white lab coat, peel back the skin to expose muscles underneath.

The dead man, estimated to be in his 80s, was embalmed about five months ago. Jones said the skin - with a mottled, beige cast - felt ``kind of leathery.''

Her classmates, some standing on chairs for a better view, seemed to take the graphic lesson in stride, watching Rudin poke and tug at muscles with interest and clinical detachment. Many said the classroom dissections they had already performed, as on cats, sheep's eyes and rats, helped prepare them for seeing a dead person.

King said that Canyon High School is the first in the Santa Clarita Valley to procure a cadaver for classroom study. The supply of donated bodies is slim to begin with, and usually college medical schools have the edge in obtaining one, she said.

On Monday, 100 students in three of King's honors anatomy classes took part in the lesson.

Lih-Wern Wang, 18, donned a surgical mask to minimize the chemical smell, but said the dissection didn't bother him otherwise. Wang, a senior, said the only other person he ever had seen dead was his grandmother.

``I've seen a dead body once. When I saw it at the funeral, it was all prepared and dressed up nice, so it was a different experience,'' he said. That experience, he emphasized, bore little similarity to looking at the man on the slab with his lower half covered by a drape.

During the lesson, Rudin used a Dremel tool outfitted with a tiny saw attachment to cut through the spinal column so he could get at the spinal cord. As he did so, the class retreated from the examining table to avoid being squirted by embalming fluid, Rudin said.

The teens asked him questions about the texture and thickness of the skin, he noted. ``They're used to their soft, supple skin, but it's really tough on the cadaver,'' said Rudin, who will finish medical school in June and plans to specialize in orthopedics.

Canyon High received scant information on the deceased. Rudin estimated the man had been about 6 feet tall and weighed about 165 pounds. A medical bracelet said the dead man had suffered from Parkinson's disease.

He also had mitral and aortic valve insufficiency, which means that ``the heart valves leak a little bit,'' Rudin said.

Senior Stacy Hoffman said that, while the color diagrams in her textbooks better illustrate the various bones, muscles and blood vessels in the body, ``it's a different experience to see it in a cadaver.''

After students took turns tugging at the erector spinae, a large muscle of the back that straightens and supports the vertebral column and the head and pulls the ribs downward, junior David Tracy, 16, said it felt ``kind of like a rubber hose.''

King said her students broached the subject of whether to name the cadaver, but she nixed that idea.

``I told them that this guy gave the ultimate sacrifice and donated his body so we could learn from it. We can't forget that he was someone's dad or husband or brother,'' King said.

Although the class interested him, Tracy said he aspires to a career in espionage. Hoffman said she envisions a medical career, but involving chemistry rather than anatomy and physiology.

Wang is considering medical school after college. ``I was thinking of majoring in biology, so I thought (the cadaver lesson) would be a good experience,'' he added.

``I think it's interesting and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,'' said Jones. ``But I want to be on Broadway.''

CAPTION(S):

3 Photos

PHOTO (1--Color) An honors class watches UCLA medical student Brian Rudin work on a corpse at Canyon High.

(2) Models of skeletons have arms draped around each other in Pamela King's anatomy classroom.

(3) no caption (Atlas of Human Anatomy book)

David Sprague/Daily News