People Who Perform Autopsies Are Sharing The Most Interesting Things They’ve Seen In A Dead Body, And Wow

Recently, I came across this Reddit thread asking, “Autopsy doctors of Reddit, what’s the most interesting thing in a body you’ve seen?” and the submissions were fascinating. Here are some of those responses.

Some responses were also from this Reddit thread because they’re just too good not to share. 

1. “I worked at a coroner’s office for a while, and once we had a guy who we thought had died from an overdose. Well, we started the autopsy, and I went to cut his lungs out, and blueberry muffin mix started coming out of them. I stuck my finger in his mouth, and it was full of blueberry muffin mix. And it was in the throat. Turns out he got just high enough to pass out while eating the muffin mix, and he ended up choking to death.”

—Dink-a-sorous

2. “When I was a med student, our cadaver had a thumb-sized lump in his scrotum. I thought we’d discover a tumor. When I dissected and cut open the scrotum, there was a plastic object. It turned out to be a penile implant. Our professor had me dissect the entire implant, and everyone else went to our table, and I had to show them the entire contraption. Reservoir, cylinders, and all.”

—BabyBumbo

3. “I had to watch an autopsy in med school, and the pathologist started removing the organs of a female in her mid-30s. In the middle of it, he said, ‘I bet she died of sepsis.’ He then removed a tampon from her vagina and simply said, ‘The ER doc is definitely gonna get sued.’ Taught me that every female in her reproductive years who is septic needs a pelvic exam.”

—BlameYourDoctor

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4. “When we got to the chest cavity, significant chunks of our fella’s right lung were liquefied. He was a long-term smoker who died from other problems going on elsewhere in his body, but I’ll never forget having to scoop brown coagulated jelly out of the chest cavity with my hands and a turkey baster. Don’t smoke, kids!”

—Brainsprout

5. “I used to cut corneas, blood vessels, heart valves, tendons, and bones out of the deceased for transplants, so I went to the medical examiners almost daily. Saw all sorts of wild things. I saw a guy who went through a road chipper (the giant machine that chews up old roads). The largest piece of him was baseball-sized.”

—zzzimcal

6. “My friend once cremated a lady, and when they pulled the table out, there were three sets of forceps sitting there. Most likely, she died in surgery, but I always thought it was wild those that were left in, and whatever metal they’re made of clearly has a higher melting point than cremation temps.”

—DaughterEarth

7. “Our cadaver had a giant, green liver, and his kidneys looked like what you’d see in a video of microwaving a bar of soap. Polycystic kidney disease is what the lab instructor said. Then again, that’s just Latin for ‘lots of cysts in a kidney.'”

—[deleted]

8. “Our cadaver was a smoker. Once we opened her chest up, the entire room smelled like cigarettes, and we had black tar flecks all over everything…for the whole semester.”

—Ninja_OT

9. “One of the cadavers my classmate had for anatomy had a teratoma. It’s a non-cancerous tumor that can develop in various body tissues. When we opened it up, we found a fully-formed tooth and some blonde hair.”

—gymlady

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10. “In my anatomy class, we each got a body to dissect. I got an older woman who died of cancer, so I spent a lot of time looking at metastasis in and around her lungs. When checking her now empty chest cavity, I found a piece of thick, coarse blue string around one of her ribs. Like a thin piece of nylon rope. I presented it to the conservator, who had no idea how it could have gotten there during the embalming process, and she had no recent scars on her chest… Some of her previous doctors were not on top of their game.”

—Lauraphoid

11. “One that stands out is an otherwise healthy forty-something who died in a motor vehicle accident who had a giant breast mass, with metastasis to the brain. The breast mass was immediately apparent upon visual inspection. She was either in denial or hiding it for other reasons.”

—slushymuddywater

12. “I worked at a medical examiner’s office for a summer. A middle-aged Japanese man was on the slab. He had lots of tattoos, and his throat was cut ear to ear/nearly decapitated. Then we look down at his penis, and there are seven or eight little bumps about half the size of an M&M randomly all around it. The medical examiner makes a curious little incision on one of the bumps, and out pops a small plastic bead. Then, I went and did some research, and it appears that ‘Genital Beading’ is an Eastern prison tradition representing every year spent in jail.”

—profchaos2001

13. “One of my uncles is a medical examiner. I shadowed him for one whole summer, and I have to say the most interesting thing I saw was a decomposed body autopsy. I would be able to tell there was a decomp on the schedule by just walking into the room. The stench is overpowering. Many of the organs lose their shape/consistency. I had to walk out of the room when he opened the skull to examine the brain, and it came out looking like spaghetti.”

—Mrivy13

14. “It may not be the coolest thing here, but my donor had a third kidney, and that’s how I found out that the diseased kidneys aren’t necessarily removed during kidney transplants.”

—[deleted]

15. “I worked at a forensic toxicology lab, and I found a liver that smelled like cinnamon. The livers were the worst-smelling things we got, but this one smelled like Fireball.”

—Homer69

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16. “My old forensics professor used to be a coroner. He had permission from the families to show us slides from scenes/autopsies in our classes. One that stayed with me was a gentleman who died and had a Y-incision down his chest with ‘Dear coroner, be gentle’ tattooed down it.”

—Harlequin91712

17. “The story was that a man was doing cable work in a cherry picker on the side of the road the previous night, around sunset. He apparently did not have the proper caution signs set up on the road, so a truck zoomed by and snagged a cable he was working with. The cable either tightened or jumped, and off came the guy’s arm and head. Yes, he was decapitated. The cable cut through his mandible, so part of his lower jaw was still attached at the neck, and his tongue was hanging out from the bottom of his head. His body also fell out of the bucket and onto the ground, many feet below. The irony was that he had two tattoos, one of which was of the Grim Reaper. The other? A chalk outline.”

—changtronic

18. “I did an autopsy on a hiker partially eaten by a grizzly. Then, did the autopsy on the grizzly suspected of eating said hiker and found tissue and clothing belonging to the hiker.”

—Kernman36

19. “I was dissecting an older lady’s leg the other day, and found a nail a few centimetres deep to the skin implanted in the fat behind her knee. There were no surgical scars, and my TA was certain it could not have been from the embalming process. The only explanation we could come up with was that this lady must’ve been shot with a nail gun at some point, and just didn’t bother to get it removed.”

—WeAreFree

20. “We found a pea and a whole piece of sliced cooked carrot in the lung of this older woman. That was weird… Possible cause of death?”

—derrickr08

21. “Honestly, nothing spooky. But I can say a burned body smells like a burned pork chop and a brain that’s been cooked looks like a boiled egg.”

—greffedufois

22. An older woman was found dead by herself in her home. There was nothing suspicious, so I was given the case. I took out all the organs, dissected everything, completely unremarkable. I cut through the larynx as the last step before I could clean up and finish the case, and boom, a giant piece of chicken lodged in her windpipe. Died choking on dinner.”

—[deleted]

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23. “I’m the person who dissects cadavers after they are donated. I had a mid-thirties female who went to the medical examiner prior to donation, but they only did an external evaluation. I went to check her genitals to see if I could palpate a uterus, and found a condom full of pills. Similar to most, the body became a crime scene, and we couldn’t touch her. When we finally were able to continue, they asked us to photograph the pills to send to the examiner’s office. They were mostly Advil and Zyrtec, easily one of the weirdest things I’ve ever found.”

—[deleted]

24. “When my parents were in medical school, they attended an autopsy of a patient who had died in a car accident. The autopsy revealed that, apparently, this guy had survived a chest shot in Vietnam years ago that the surgeons/medics left in rather than perform risky surgery, the accident had migrated the bullet to his heart, and it was ruled the cause of death.”

—ZCYCS

25. “I saw a guy who had been shot in the head a couple of times. Three definite entries and a blown-out skull, but police only found one bullet. We couldn’t find the other bullet in his head at all. I assumed the police missed it. I went on as normal with the autopsy until we got to the chest cavity. The other bullet was just chilling beside his lung. Turns out it entered the skull, hit the inside, ricocheted down his neck, and into the chest. That was pretty wild.”

—[deleted]

26. “Not mine, but a doctor I used to work with. When he was in school, he would often conduct his cadaver labs late at night (to many people during the day). One time, it was around 2 a.m. He was listening to his lecture on his headphones, and he saw the cadaver’s arm move/twitch. He thought it was just his mind playing tricks on him. Then he saw it again. Proceeded to run away in a panic. He told a few of his classmates what happened, but nobody believed him. The next day, they had a group cadaver lab with the same cadaver. The arm twitched yet again. The professor did some digging and it turns out the patients pacemaker was still fully functional and occasionally fired, causing the arm twitch. He was so relieved. He thought there was a zombie in there.”

—sumtinfunny

27. Finally, “When I worked for the medical examiner’s office, a pathologist came and got all of us to check out a post she was doing. The man had a condition called Situs Inversus. All his organs were backward. Left lung on the right, stomach on the right, etc., no mention of it in his medical history.”

—imahntr

Responses have been edited for length/clarity.

To all the medical examiners out there, what are the wildest things you’ve discovered while giving an autopsy? Let us know in the comments. Or, if you prefer to remain anonymous, share your submission in the form below.

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