Dale Abrahamson can appreciate how a corpse can save lives.

Abrahamson, chair of anatomy and cell biology at the Kansas University Medical Center, said everyone from the most experienced surgeon to the first-year medical student learns essential skills by working with bodies donated to science.

At KUMC, the Will Body Program meets teaching and research needs that can’t be replicated with textbooks, computer software or plastic mannequins.

“There is no substitution of the real thing,” Abrahamson said. “It has an indelible impact.”

Surgeons perfect new techniques on cadavers, he said. Experimental medical devices also are given trial runs. Researchers study diseased tissue.

Bequeathed bodies have a lasting impact on students in health education — nursing, physical therapy, dentistry and medicine.

“Lives of the deceased live through the eyes and hands of students as they go through their entire practice,” Abrahamson said. “They never, ever will have forgotten what they learned from this patient.”

KUMC medical students take a class in which they study one body through an entire course. It’s a course in which they develop an understanding of the interaction of 600 muscles and 200 bones.

“They’ll basically learn the entire structure of the body through examination of this individual — bones, muscles, nerves — in exhaustive detail,” Abrahamson said. “This is the underpinning of medicine.”

KUMC’s program started in 1899 and flourishes a century later largely by word-of-mouth. It’s not advertised, yet thousands have registered for the program.

Folks inquiring about the program at KUMC are sent explanatory materials.

Most of the body donations come from Kansas and Missouri. The majority are elderly. Few are younger than 60 years of age. The gender mix is about 50-50. Donors reflect the general population, and have included lawyers, carpenters, doctors and clergy.

Bodies of people who had communicable diseases or were obese cannot be accepted.

“That’s generally not a problem,” Abrahamson said.

Some folks sign up to protest against cemeteries that cover vast tracts of land.

Others do it for financial reasons. At KUMC, donor estates pay to transport a body to the medical center. But the deceased are embalmed and cremated at state expense.

After use at the medical center, remains can be returned to families for burial. Or program participants can have their ashes buried in a common grave at Oak Hill Cemetery in Lawrence.

A service is conducted annually by KUMC clergy in honor of donors and their families. The names of participants are read aloud. A single marker identifies the year in which the group was interred.

Abrahamson said donations to the medical center had kept pace with growing demand for research and teaching.

“We live in a part of the country where people are generous in lots of ways,” he said. “This is just another example, perhaps, of the ultimate generosity.”