anonyme - Dissection - étudiants en médecine

This photo is a group dissection, a type of collective portrait commonly seen among medical students between about 1880 and 1930. The students posed around their cadaver as a rite of passage and to mark their identity as future physicians. One sees a group of men, mainly students with at least one staff member, around a wooden dissection table. The body is opened, the viscera are exposed and additional anatomical pieces are suspended on a board. A man holds a small specimen of a fetus or infant. Another, wearing a cap marked "FM", is seated in front with a bone saw. I have strong suspicions that the "FM" on the cap stands for Faculty of Medicine.
frame size approximately
34 by 28 cm