Paper short abstract:

The paper looks at the significance of a human skull both in in the process of subjective making of a physician and his or her attitude towards human body and health care ethics.

Paper long abstract:

The paper explores the use of human bones in the context of healing practices in Latvia. It focusses at the first encounter of medical students with the human

body. The study was conducted as a case study in a larger project on

biotechnologies in Latvia pointing, on the one hand, at the

significance of human body in symbolic and cognitive transformation of

medical students into medical professionals and, on the other, the role of

tactile and visual practices which allow transforming human bodies into instruments,knowledge and attributes of the profession contributing to undwrstanding of medical ethics. The study is based on 29

interviews with medical professionals of different generations

concentrating on their stories on human skulls used for

their anatomy lessons. I argue that the ambivalence generated in the

practice of learning human body sets the context for further ethical

attitudes.