In this paper, I explore the role of cadaver dissection in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australian medical education, whilst situating it within wider literature about what the cadaver and its dissection at the hands of the anatomist represents. Although dissection was deemed a skill necessary to becoming a physician, submissions to the publication of the Melbourne Medical School Students’ Society, The Speculum, reveal the difficulty students faced in negotiating the meaning of the deceased human body, and their emotions towards it in medical school. Students vividly express deep anxieties, fears, revulsion, and guilt towards dissection. Based on a selection of these written responses in The Speculum, I suggest that typical images of nineteenth-century medical students as disorderly and ill-mannered are not necessarily accurate. Instead, students at the Melbourne Medical School demonstrate a strong ability to approach dissection subjects with empathy and thoughtfulness. Through this discussion, I therefore recast medical students as more aware of the moral complexities of dissection than previously acknowledged in the historiography of Australian medicine. In doing so, I place these intimate student experiences into a larger-scale argument about the cultural purpose and the meaning of dissection and the corpse, within the medical profession and the public.