Madeline
Most books are written about living people. But in Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers the focus is on the benefit bodies provide after the person has died. What comes of these valuable bodies that are traditionally thrown out regardless of how useful they may be. This is the book about how the dead has given way to preserve lives of the living.
Premise of Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Although the subject, death, is a serious subject, the writing of Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is light and airy. The author comes from a background of writing about travel, not death, and therefore has a different writing style than expected. There are jokes, not made out of disrespect, but out of the joke of life, where we will all end up today. Topics covered include why cadavers are more useful than say an animal during testing, how human cadavers are used in the medical field for practicing and testing surgeries, why cannibalism for regular nourishment does not make sense, various beliefs about human cadavers, and my personal favorite, human head transplants.
Because these topics are not written dryly, the topics are easy to follow and because they are easy to follow, had me completely fascinated. But it does not come with out a cringe factor. I found myself verbally “yuck”ing and “eeww”ing as I was reading this book. Did you know, because gut bacteria does not die when a body dies, instead of eating the food the body eats it starts to eat the human body? Yeah, stuff like that.
How I Feel About My Own Body
The last chapter of Stiff The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers is reserved for the author, Mary Roach, to explain the thoughts about her own body after she dies, so I figured I would continue this conversation with my thoughts about my own body. It has always been my plan to donate my body and I still plan to do so; however, this book has given me pause to think about this. I thought I knew, at least roughly, how the process would go.
My assumption has always been that my organs would be donated to someone who needs them more than my dead corpse. But this book has pointed out that this is not always the case. Donated corpses may instead get a nose job, get shot into outer space, or, more rarely but still a possibility, pickled for the next 10,000 years. Is this something I am okay with? Is this something I would be willing to do? I do not think the answer is obvious, but I like the author’s answer, it depends on what my living loved ones are comfortable with. This may cause me to have some serious and uncomfortable conversations with those around me.
Final Thoughts
Stiff The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers is a highly recommended book for anyone who is not squeamish about dead bodies and human cadavers. The book is absolutely fascinating and covers a lot of topics I would never even think to ask. I will be pulling out various things I have learned from this book and dropping it into casual conversation during dinner. That will absolutely happen!
