We’ve come a long way from the “operating theaters” of the 19th century and previous, where the surgery was primarily for the benefit of the audience whether the patient survived was somewhat incidental. Medical schools are turning to cadavers for help. But many patients these days resist the idea of a less-thanex-pert hand working with their insides, and training is becoming trickier. The standard procedure in hospitals for training new surgeons is to have them watch actual surgeries in the operating room, and assist with more and more complicated operations.

But at the same time, the surgeons are thrilled to have a chance to practice on a face that won’t scrutinize itself in the mirror later on. Faces and hands can be the hardest cadaver body parts to work with, emotionally, because they’re the parts of a person we see and interact with the most when the person is alive. They’re being operated on by plastic surgeons practicing for face-lifts and reconstructive surgeries. In an anatomy lab at a university medical center, severed heads are laid out in aluminum pans on soothing lavender tablecloths. Cadavers can be run over, shot, and operated on without suffering, making them incredibly useful to a society that needs to test surgical procedures and new technology in an ethical way. Cadavers have taught us anatomy, enabled the success of heart transplants, and helped design safer automobiles.

Many people like the idea of their body serving a useful purpose after they die, and author Mary Roach sees no disrespect in describing those purposes. And while dying involves many difficult emotions - love, anger, grief, fear - being dead is a completely different stage in the body’s existence. They are what’s left behind when the people pass away. The most important thing to remember about cadavers is that although they look like people, they aren’t.

Like strange and slightly macabre stories.

In this book review of Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, you’ll learn about the all-important contributions cadavers have made to the fields of medicine, vehicle safety, and forensics, among others, as well as some of the more absurd situations they have ended up in.Ī look at the unsung (and unliving) heroes of science and medicine. Writer Mary Roach has traveled the world in search of strange and interesting things to write about, and now she explores a topic we often cover with a mental sheet: the experiences of dead bodies.

Stiff and bonk author