Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab

A fascinating account of this `acceptable taboo' subject - namely the medical dissection of the human body by medical students. This is a personal, because the author is one of the students. She takes us through the entire semester - or more precisely the spiritual journey she undergoes. We follow Ms. Montross through her development - both human and medical. She is obviously anguished by what she has to do in the medical lab - and her reactions and expose give the book great beauty. We can feel her growth, she makes incredible connections between her lab work and internship with live patients. She realizes that the extreme awkwardness and cutting to exposure ALL parts of the human body is also a preparation for dealing with real people who may be terminally ill, have grotesque disfigurations... Like all medical students she must learn to balance feelings and discomfort when listening to patients - but not at the loss of giving just a cold clinical diagnosis. We also get a sense of the mental and physical stress that these students undergo - not all of them make it through the entire term. They are in their own special club - and those outside the club cannot properly relate to them. Ms. Montross gives us wonderful insights into this club. Another aspect of the book I liked was its lack of criticisms. This is not a book that rails against the medical profession and those in it. It treats all from the body undergoing dissection to the students, doctors and patients with a great deal of humanism and respect. She also gives a history of anatomical dissection and how bodies were acquired (more often stolen) in past eras. Given the subject this is not easy reading - it is necessarily morbid. I did not have nightmares, but the words in the book remain with you - as does any good book.

If you're like me and wondered what it's like to be a medical student and to first learn the internals of the body then this is our book. Excellent insights into the amazing structure of the human body, from the unique perspective of taking one apart. Now that I'm older I'm fascinated about how the body works and wish I had had the opportunity - and the courage to get over the inevitable squeamishness - to attempt to become a doctor. Oh well, 'Body of Work' let's me imagine what it's like. The author, Dr. Christine Montross, writes well and often turns a beautifully crafted phrase that conveys the emotion of what she sees. Highly recommended.

First year med students learn anatomy by spending a semester, 14 hours a week, dissecting a cadaver. Issues of cultural taboo, squeamishness and professionalism necessarily arise. Montross, who, at 28, had already been a poet and a teacher, chooses this profound experience as the backbone of her memoir on becoming a doctor. Older than most of her classmates, she has a stable, happy relationship and a wider, more mature perspective than, say, gung-ho Raj, fresh from college, who can't wait to start cutting. Montross herself is much more ambivalent and approaches her team's corpse with curiosity about its life. With their first view of her, their cadaver furnishes her own name - Eve. The old woman has no belly button! Montross takes us through her team of four's first cuts - the trepidation, ambivalence, feelings of inadequacy and amazement. She also tells us how it feels to put scalpel to embalmed flesh, to saw through bones and softer tissue. "The muscle and cartilage are much easier to saw, but, as a result, doing so lacks the distraction that effort affords. The tissue spins off the blade in small bits, which look like tiny roots or fingernail clippings." Graphic descriptions of the layers of flesh and muscle, the intricate and ingenious, but messy and confusing circulation system, the distinct and functional organs, fascinate and repel. Montross describes the process of normal decay after death - but the medical cadavers could remain at room temperature for 20 years without further decay. Taking periodic breaks, she explores the history of medical cadavers: body snatchers and religious taboos, the early scientists who donated their own bodies, and the condemned prisoners donated by the state. She visits the historic dissecting theater at Padua, which probably had a table that flipped, so if officials approached the forbidden corpse could be hidden below, while an animal appeared in its place. Montross reflects on the dedication of those early doctors and students who risked disgrace, prison and even death for the acquisition of knowledge. Another visit takes her to Rome, to the crypt of the Capuchin monks, maintained and added to from 1631 to 1870. The bones of 4,000 friars have been meticulously preserved in a series of chapels. But far stranger than the skeletons still standing in their habits are the chandeliers of arm bones and clavicles hanging from the ceilings, the filigree of ribs decorating the doorways, the wreaths of pelvises and backbones displayed on the walls. Clinical detachment has always struggled with cultural or emotional taboos and Montross returns again and again to her own efforts to balance feeling and professionalism throughout her med school experience. "My ability to manage my own discomfort in the face of their bodies and their illnesses would be one of the most critical lessons of my medical training." She tells of treating a non-responsive patient day after day, going through the motions, her thoughts else

Just finished this book. Had to stop several times because of memories of my medical school and residency years. Cried some, laughed some and nodded my head often. What I liked was that this was not simply a memoir , but an intriguing look at medical history and practices in other countries. I am a child psychiatrist and part time poet, so I identified on many levels. I was the reader at our table-2 prospective surgeons took over the dissection. The emotions of becoming a doctor are wonderfully described and I will recommend it to fellow physicians and prospective ones alike. Beautifully done. Jim Wicoff m.d.

Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab, by Dr. Christine Montross, jumps out as something entirely predictable... what you would get if you crossed writers Terry Tempest Williams (Refuge) and Atul Gawande (Complications). In other words, Montross writes with knowledge and determination, passion and persuasion, connection and compassion. During her first year in medical school, her most important dissection partner was a deceased woman she named Eve. Whatever Eve did in life, in death she shaped Montross forever. Montross marveled at Eve's lack of a belly button, the bone dust Montross inhaled, the wonder of Eve's gift of herself. Eve morphed into a totally dissected person, and to the end, Montross would always consider her a person, not a thing, and not an abstraction. This experience, along with vignettes from her rotations in medical school, are shared throughout the book. But Montross goes beyond that, delving into the history of anatomy, of human dissection, and of our linkage of what remains after we die with our spiritual connections. There's a reason saints were delivered in many pieces to places of worship, that medical students resorted to grave robbery, and that Thai medical students respect their dissection experiences throughout their career. Montross weaves her anatomy experiences with her own life and relationship. There is a sensitivity here that makes you want to choose her as your own physician. By golly, if I am brain dead, I want Dr. Montross to check my pain reflexes! Finally, there are a number of books about that first year experience in medical school, and they all share the spirit of discovery in anatomy. This one goes where others have not, and reflects Montross's background as a teacher of English and a poet... observations of anatomy through the MFA lens. This is a great book to give that person who yearns to follow her into the healing professions.