Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab
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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 brings an uncommon perspective to the emotional difficulty of the first year of medical school, and her disturbing, often entertaining anecdotes enrich this exquisitely crafted memoir, endowing an eerie beauty to the world of a doctor-in-training. The New York Times - Mary Roach Medical professionals will find much to comfort, but also to challenge, themselves in these pages. The book is of even more value to patients. I will no longer complain so readily about a doctor who seems uncaring. Montross makes us aware of the profound and unavoidable dilemma at the core of doctoring: physicians must place themselves at the midpoint between excessive emotional involvement with patients and a complete lack of empathy. Montross describes her struggles to tread this shifting, fragile ground. During a conversation about whether to suspend the treatment of a dying cancer patient, the man s daughter says to her, If this were your father, what would you do?
Preface: Mystery 1Bone Box 7First Cut 15Breath and Blood 31Anatomical Precedence 45Origins of a Corpse 63In Pursuit of Wonder 93The Bodies of Strangers 119Toll 137The Discomfort of Doctoring 163An Unsteady Balance 183Pelvis 211Dismantled 251Epilogue: Good-bye 291Bibliography 293Acknowledgments 296
