Body of Work
Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab
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Christine Montross was a nervous first-year medical student, standing outside the anatomy lab on her first day of class, preparing herself for what was to come. Entering a room with stainless-steel tables topped by corpses in body bags is shocking no matter how long you've prepared yourself, but a strange thing happened when Montross met her cadaver. Instead of being disgusted by her, she was utterly intrigued—intrigued by the person the woman once was, humbled by the sacrifice she had made in donating her body to science, and fascinated by the strange, unsettling beauty of the human form. They called her Eve. This is the story of Montross and Eve—the student and the subject—and the surprising relationship that grew between them.
Body of Work is a mesmerizing, rarely seen glimpse into the day-to-day life of a medical student—yet one that follows naturally in the footsteps of recent highly successful literary renderings of the mysteries of medicine, such as Atul Gawande's Complications: A Surgeon's Notes on an Imperfect Science. Christine Montross was a poet long before she became a doctor, and she brings an uncommon perspective to the emotional difficulty of the first year of medical school—the dispiriting task of remaining clinical and detached while in the anatomy lab, and the struggle with the line you've crossed by violating another's body once you leave it.
Montross was so affected by her experience with Eve that she undertook to learn more about the history of cadavers and the study of anatomy. She visited an autopsy lab in Ireland and the University of Padua in Italy where Vesalius, a forefather of anatomy, once studied. She learned about body snatchers and grave robbers and anatomists who practiced their work on live criminals. Her disturbing, often entertaining anecdotes enrich this exquisitely crafted memoir, endowing an eerie beauty to the world of a doctor-in-training. Body of Work is an unforgettable examination of the mysteries of the human body and a remarkable look at our relationship with both the living and the dead.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 23, 2007 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9781400124879
- File size: 270091 KB
- Duration: 09:22:41
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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BODY OF WORK is Christine Montross's memoir of her first year in medical school, during which she studied human anatomy with the help of "EveG" an elderly woman who donated her remains for that purpose. Thoroughly and methodically dissecting a human cadaver is an experience that includes equal parts revulsion, fascination, empathy, and indifference. Renée Raudman touches on each of these in all the appropriate places, and with just the right level of emotion. Her tone, like Montross's writing, is often irreverent and dryly funny, without ever being disrespectful. The author interview at the end gives an added glimpse into the anatomy lab. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine -
BODY OF WORK is Christine Montross's memoir of her first year in medical school, during which she studied human anatomy with the help of "EveΓ" an elderly woman who donated her remains for that purpose. Thoroughly and methodically dissecting a human cadaver is an experience that includes equal parts revulsion, fascination, empathy, and indifference. Renée Raudman touches on each of these in all the appropriate places, and with just the right level of emotion. Her tone, like Montross's writing, is often irreverent and dryly funny, without ever being disrespectful. The author interview at the end gives an added glimpse into the anatomy lab. D.B. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from April 2, 2007
Though it never goes for the gross-out effect, this memoir is not for the squeamish. "You begin to learn to heal the living by dismantling the dead," says Montross, and though her recollections encompass all of her medical training, the narrative backbone of the story is her semester-long dissection of a human cadaver, from opening up the ribcage to removing the brain from the skull. Montross was a poet and writing teacher before she decided to become a doctor, and she peppers her account of the dismantling of her cadaver, Eve—so named because she has no belly button—with arresting imagery: to test the heart's semilunar valves ("little half-moons that work passively and without musculature"), she and another student take the organ to a sink and run tap water through it. Performing her own dissection leads Montross to explore the history of studying anatomy through corpses, which brings tantalizing detours to medieval Italian universities and saints' shrines. But she also recounts her earliest encounters with living patients, such as a heart-wrenching consultation with a man suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease, who can communicate only by blinking. Her thoughtful meditations on balancing clinical detachment and emotional engagement will easily find a spot on the shortlist of great med school literature.
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