Body of Work
Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab Christine Montross,
Publisher: Penguin Press HC, The
ISBN: 1594201250
DDC: 920
Edition: Hardcover; 2007-06-21
Summary:
A hauntingly moving memoir of the relationship between a cadaver
named Eve and the first-year medical student who cuts her open
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, 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 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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