Photos: Thai medical students honour cadavers as silent teachers

Over the last week, Thai medical students paid tribute over the coffins of hundreds of cadavers, in a series of ceremonies culminating in a cremation, to bid farewell to the corpses who served as silent teachers in their classrooms and helped them sharpen their dissection and anatomy skills. Students across 26 temples gathered along with the family members of the people who donated themselves to medical study as a final tribute to their role in training the future medical professionals of the country. ...read more

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Medical students arrive for a ceremony to pay respects to cadavers used in their studies at Chulalongkorn Hospital in Bangkok, Thailand. The students said prayers over the coffins of some 300 cadavers in a solemn ceremony to bid farewell to the corpses who helped them sharpen their dissection and anatomy knowledge. (Sakchai Lalit / AP)

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Offerings and paper shirts are placed in a coffin for a cadaver during the religious ceremony ahead of their cremation over the weekend. Uniformed students carrying flowers and burning incense paid tribute to those who have donated their bodies to medicine -- helping to train the medics of the future. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)

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Medical students and volunteers lay down garlands, paying respects to the cadavers. “We don’t really know the people, but for me, we are close... we spend a lot of time together,” said 21-year-old Paspimol Kositchaiwat, who is in her second year of medical school at Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University. (Sakchai Lalit / AP)

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As a Brahmin priest recited prayers, the second-year students held jasmine garlands and prayed over their anatomy aides, whose remains were wreathed in plastic. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)

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Volunteers light incense during the religious ceremony by Chulalongkorn University medical students. Rituals honouring medical cadavers are a common practice in Thailand, where the ceremonies fuse elements of Hinduism with the country’s majority Buddhist faith. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)

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Chulalongkorn University medical students carry flowers to be handed to hundreds of family members during the cremation ceremony for the cadavers at Buddhist That Thong temple in Bangkok. “We needed their bodies to study and today is the day we thank them,” Kositchaiwat said. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)

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Medical students carry the ceremonial bier bearing cadavers. The early-morning event at Chulalongkorn marked the start of three days of ceremonies that ended with cremations over the weekend. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)

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Tanvaa Tansatit, an associate professor in the university’s surgical training centre, said 26 different temples in Bangkok were participating in the cremations. “In the medical field, we need body donors and so for us it’s important to thank the people who agreed to be donors,” she said. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)

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Flowers lit by a flame from the Thai Royal family burns the ceremonial bier bearing cadavers. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)

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Cadavers seen at the Chulalongkorn University. The number of Thais signing up as donors spiked in 2015 after the death of a prominent monk who had agreed to give his body to a medical faculty. (Romeo Gacad / AFP)