An eyelid is a thin fold of skin that covers and protects the eye. With the exception of the prepuce and the labia minora, it has the thinnest skin of the whole body.
Half a century ago, roughly half of all hospital deaths in the United States got autopsies. (…)
The autopsy is the ultimate medical audit. It is a foundation of modern medicine, and its two greatest values are to show doctors where they tend to go wrong, both on the individual level and through all of medicine, and providing crucial medical information to the families of the dead. It ensures that instead of burying their mistakes, doctors learn from them.
For instance, an autopsy revealed that an otherwise mysterious death was due to a pulmonary embolism — and that the embolism was in turn caused by widespread cancer in a woman who was thought healthy. This history of cancer will be of vital importance to her children and other relatives. It will also teach the doctors who cared for her some valuable lessons in diagnosis and treatment.
