Students in the anatomy lab at Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine school of medicine. Chuck Frost, Bralin Bean, Jenna Bates, Nate Benitez, Adam Boiter, Chris Bazemore, and Nate Moore.

The anatomy lab at Spartanburg's new medical school can accommodate 193 bodies, 165 of them alive.

The 28 remaining are human cadavers, subjects of intense scrutiny for the first-year students at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine.

"Probably the most difficult thing an American medical student has to do is understand human anatomy," said Dr. Lance Paulman, a professor of anatomy at VCOM. "They take the body apart so they can learn to put it back together."

The students have worked with the same bodies since September, when the school opened, and now they're planning a memorial service on Friday in Columbia to honor the deceased.

The University of South Carolina runs the Gift of Bodies program, which allows people to donate their bodies to science after they die. Their gift provides bodies for the USC's medical school and VCOM. The service is a chance for students to honor that gift.

"They get to explain to the families (of the deceased) how beneficial their loved one's gift has been," Paulman said.

The students only learn the age, cause of death and primary occupation of the dead person they are assigned. But they learn much more about the body.

They make incisions and remove the skin. They look at the musculoskeletal system, the placement of the body's organs, and the interconnectedness of all of its systems.

"Until you go in and you see it and you look at those relationships, that's when it really hits home," said Randy Baxley, 36, a VCOM student. "You don't realize who's whose neighbor."

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Anatomy students at Edward Via honor those who donated bodies to science