Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

As a med student and as someone who watched the whole of Six Feet Under series in under 6 days, in the recent past, I would characterize the first three chapters of this book as mildly interesting and the rest of it as sleep inducing - not curious, definitely not. No one suggested this book to me. I picked it as a random read. It is my fault that this terrible thing has happened. You see, the first image that came to my mind as I read the catching title of the book was that of a middle-aged introverted bespectacled pathologist elbow deep in a cadaver's body cavity standing in a dimly lit morgue in the basement with flickering lights and a buzzing refrigerator, walls painted green. I imagined some good soul coaxed this recluse to share her knowledge and the secrets of the dead she gleaned over decades of dedicated work. I hadn't heard of Mary Roach before. And I didn't this media-like person butting in while science people doing science. You could call me elitist. But I have seen the other books she wrote, there is an image of her in zero gravity simulation on Google. I don't really mind her writing this book, I'm just envious that she gets do all that without even a degree in science.

Over 11 chapters the author narrates an account of her visits to experts in various fields that make use of cadavers for different purposes. I went into the book with only the idea of medical and academic uses of cadavers in mind. It is true that 80% of cadavers end up in anatomy labs, but there are few other intriguing final resting places too. Like the compost or someone else's stomach. The author gets into all this in a really detailed fashion (only detailed not deep) and at times veering off to obscure history.

Humor is an essential part of the book. It's what makes this palatable. Though at times I felt that it was a little overdone, I have no complaints in that regard. It is a funny book. You get to read stuff like:
“Compost should not be ugly,” she is saying. “It should be lively, it should be romantic.”“There are ten fetuses here, all aborted this morning,” the Express reporter claims she was told...“Normally we doctors take them home to eat, Since you don't look well, you can take them.”

I have a new found appreciation for modern medicine and the people who contributed to it (alive and dead). Humor in a book about dead bodies does not come out as disrespectful. In fact how people, who have to shoot at cadavers, put them in cars and simulate head on collisions, everyday as part of their jobs is discussed multiple times, throughout the book. There are also chapters on beating hard cadavers (brain dead people for organ transplant) and cannibalism and early experiments on brain transplant.

Someone who is not acquainted to the topic and is not too squeamish might find this interesting.
“Because all the bacteria in the mouth chew through the palate,” explains Arpad. And because brains are soft and easy to eat. “The brain liquefies very quickly. It just pours out the ears and bubbles out the mouth”
If you are okay with that sentence, you may try this book. Happy reading!

p.s : you may skip the shroud of turin chapter, some guy trying to prove the shroud was real after crucifying recently dead cadavers. It adds nothing to the book.

Another great adventure into something with Mary Roach. Mary's real thoughts and humor mixed in with what could be quite dry science makes the subject matter oh-so-much more compelling.

Readers are in for a treat to learn about what our meatbags are like after our consciousness is gone from them. - note - she never refers to us as meatbags

In addition to shedding light on a subject most of us will never be able to learn first hand, she also humanizes the work - noting the names and appearances of each person she encounters in her reporting.

I recommend this one for sure.

I read this immediately after [b:Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void 7237456 Packing for Mars The Curious Science of Life in the Void Mary Roach https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1290480157s/7237456.jpg 8159756] - high on a newly discovered favorite author. I think Reading the two quite so adjacently resulted in a less favorable view of Stiff - there is an almost completely replicated chapter between the two discussing the use of cadavers to simulate forces on an astronaut's body during spaceflight, and the voice and humor is nearly identical between the two books. That being said, Stiff was still quite good, perhaps objectively the superior book as Roach covers a very broad range of subjects. She again excels at covering all angles of a subject. For instance, when covering the history of medical cadavers, she comments on the setup of modern anatomy classes, ceremonies respecting cadaver donors, the history of graverobbing for the purpose of providing anatomic cadavers, the history surrounding specific graverobbers as well as specific professors using their services as well as the theories about human anatomy during each period and how these changed over time using knowledge learned through dissection.