“We are biology. We are reminded of this at the beginning and at the end, at birth and at death. In between we do what we can to forget.”
We think we have the autonomy on what we do and what we want to achieve in life but in reality, it is just a mixture of our thoughts and predilections, expectations of the people around us, the pattern accepted and followed in our society and finally the opportunities available. Most of us think that life is the end of it, we can’t do anything we want once we die and the little autonomy we got while living is also dead with us. But what if someone tells us that you can decide what you do after dying or more importantly if someone says you can do many things even after you die?
Stiff by Mary Roach is one such book, which explores the possibilities in which a human cadaver can be useful. If we discuss the possibilities available for a cadaver a few hundred years ago then it was just medicine, scientists only used them to know what is inside, what cannot be seen within a living. But today there are innumerable things, from using cadavers for practicing surgery, studying anatomy to using them for studying a crash or crucifixion experiment, the dead can help us in so many ways. It is a book full of references from the past, developments in various fields, excerpts from important research papers and various interviews. The interviews mentioned in the book are very detailed and vivid, giving the gist of every interaction clearly. The references are on point and give complete information about the history and latest developments. We can call Mary Roach an equally good researcher as she is a writer, because without any scientific degree she knows what to look for and where. She went to places to find the real truth about weird articles on cadaver handling.
It is a book about the dead, and if we see there is nothing that can be very interesting or cheerful about them. But surprisingly this book has a funny and gratuitous undertone to it. It is very remarkable how the author has included every basic detail without making the chapters overbearing for the readers. The confidentiality of the cadavers have been maintained as no specific detail or names have been mentioned throughout the book. This forms an important element of the narration as it prevents the reader from getting deeply involved with the cadavers and setting a gloomy mood for the book. All the chapters are standalone so you can start from wherever you want but the introduction of the book is an essential read in my opinion because it connects us with the author. There were multiple occasions throughout the book when I was thinking about who this person is, why she is doing it and whether she is normal or crazy but because I read the introduction I knew she is as normal as us, it’s just that her quest is a bit extraordinary than ours. The writing style of the book is straightforward, clear and factual. It is not a book to make you feel good or happy, it is a book to give insight on a topic we avoid discussing or consider too gross to discuss. She tried discussing topics like cannibalism and the trading of human cadavers at a time when there was scarcity as openly as she discussed the respect given to cadavers by the people who handle them and the memorials set up for them by the hospitals.
This book leaves a lot of take home messages, first of which is the immense amount of knowledge on cadaver handling and use across the globe. It also spreads awareness about the need for organ donation and body donation after death. It gives a better understanding on the usefulness of cadaver which is usually left unnoticed by people when it comes to donating their own loved ones. And most importantly it leaves the message that it might seem gross and morbid but studying the dead is essential for development of not only medicine but also technology. The only drawback of the book is that it was published more than a decade ago and the advances that have happened in the past one decade are major enough to change the narration to a significant extent.
This book is an essential read for the first year medical students because they are the first ones who come in contact with cadavers and this book can help them understand the importance of the cadavers and the respect we need to give them. Lastly I will also recommend this book to everyone because it is a story of life after death, it is a collection of adventures the author faced while looking at the dead and a book with innumerable accounts of morgues, anatomy labs and cemeteries.
