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    Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab
    Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab
    Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab
    Audiobook9 hours

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

    Written by Christine Montross

    Narrated by Renee Raudman

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    This is 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, 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateJul 23, 2007
    ISBN9781400174874
    Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab

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    Reviews for Body of Work

    4/5

    56 ratings8 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I wished I was gifted this book at the inception of medical school, but nonetheless as I embark on studying for my exit examinations from medical school, it has opened my eyes to a new perspective regarding death and the act of healing. It was eloquently written and the imagery was remarkable. I came to be a part of the anatomy dissections and a part of her dissection team. Thank you for writing such a lovely book.
    • 4/5
      This book contains some fascinating insights into a medical student's experience in Anatomy lab, where they perform human dissection on cadavers. As well as some interesting snippets of the history of anatomical dissection.

      However, there are times where the procedure she is performing is explained well and others where she is cutting into one latin-word to get to another latin-word without explaining what those were, which did cause some confusion. Otherwise though this is well read and definately worth a listen :)
    • 4/5
      A mix of biography - documenting her first year as a medical student, dissecting a cadaver that her team dubbed "eve". She travels during the year to Europe, learning the history of cadaver dissection's. And each chapter is prefaced with a quotation/meditation, which brackets the different work, the author's family life and other events that are shaping her medical training, on the way to becoming a psychiatrist.
    • 4/5
      BODY OF WORK is, I suppose, pretty much what its subtitle, MEDITATIONS ON MORTALITY FROM THE HUMAN ANATOMY LAB, promises it will be. I think I wanted it to be more memoir than it was, but then that's just me, not the author's fault. I found it to be, overall, only mildly interesting. The sections which dwelled on the history of medicine and medical training seemed to slow the flow of the narrative, and I found myself skimming over these parts. It was only when Montross let herself get personal, when she reflected on the woman whose body she was systematically dismembering and studying, wondering who she might have been, what her life was like, that I found myself caught up. There is certainly much here that does cause one to pause and consider the very thin line between life and death.But to my mind Montross's writing is at its very best when she allows herself to talk about her family. Her childhood, spent happily at Higgins Lake, in northern Michigan. And, most of all, those several pages she gives us about her grandparents. That glimpse into their lives when they were very young and in love, their hurried wartime wedding and the long and loving marriage that ensued, and, finally, their declining health. Those pages moved me deeply, perhaps because I am now closer to her grandparents' age than I am to hers. Montross, who studied creative writing and is, besides being a doctor, a poet, is without question a fine writer. I will recommend this book, particularly to anyone who is interested in medicine and its practice.- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER
    • 4/5
      I really enjoyed this book, probably because I could relate so much of what the author described to my own experiences with cadaveric dissection - everything from trying to find the right balance of humor and respectfulness in the lab, to the rush of emotions you feel when you see that your cadaver has painted fingernails (ours were a pearly pink), a stark reminder that she was once a living and breathing human being and not just a lab specimen. The historical bits were interesting as well, and reading this book made me really want to get back to the the lab again.
    • 5/5
      I read this as research for something I'm writing, but it is amazing and beautiful and striking. It also has some wonderfully gruesome history in it.
    • 4/5
      Intelligent, intriguing, beautiful, horrible.....all these words accurately describe this memoir of a young woman's entry into the world of the human anatomy lab. Christine began her journey with unbridled anticipation of what she would encounter during her first semester at medical school. What she experienced was far beyond anything she had imagined. The author takes the reader through a first hand look at groups of young, inexperienced med students as they gather around "their" corpse in the anatomy lab. There are eighteen corpses to go around, with four or five students per corpse.Between her strongly emotional and physical reactions to this experience, and her surprising emotional attachment to "her" corpse, whom they named Eve, the author takes us through the many changes that the practice of dissection of the body has gone through since the early, early times in Europe and how the physicians during that time often had to resort to grave robbing in order to provide their students and themselves bodies to use for dissection and learning, due to the banishment of the practice by the Catholic church at that time.Christine also writes of her intense feelings of invasion into Eve's body, but also the gratitude of the gift that Eve gave in order for these students to learn from. Throughout the semester, the reader watches as Christine grows more and more sure of herself as she gets familiar with the human anatomy, in a way that no textbook could provide. But also the reader sees Christine come of age in recognizing the true humanity in each person she comes into contact with during her rounds, and finding her place as a physician in the world of illness and disease.I found the book to be absolutely beautifully written, incredibly interesting and although gruesome at times for the lay person, as myself, it was an enthralling book about the reality of human dissection and the start of this young woman's challenging choice of professions.
    • 4/5
      An excellent story of one medical student's experience in the gross anatomy lab, overlaid with personal stories and reflections. Told predominantly from her perspective as a first year medical student, the story is eminently human and readable. She has not yet begun to truly objectify patients as she must to survive the grueling process of becoming a doctor. An excellent and thought provoking book that makes one consider what it is to be human.