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

Author:  Christine Montross

Publishing Company:  The Penguin Press

Year:  2007

# of Pages: 295

ISBN #:  978-159420-125-7

$31.00 Canada

$24.95 USA 

4 Stars

Reviewer:  Deborah Ground Buckner 

Dr. Christine Montross brings an unusual perspective to an unusual subject in Body of Work.  First a poet, with a master's of fine arts in poetry from the University of Michigan and several poems published in literary journals, Dr. Montross became a medical student and is now a resident in psychiatry at Brown University.  With the eyes of a poet, she entered the human anatomy lab and engaged in the dissection of a cadaver donated for research.  Dr. Montross takes the reader along on the journey. 

Though the topic may seem morbid, the story is not.  Rather, Dr. Montross provides a sensitive student's view of the intricate elements of the human body, teaching medical terminology along the way.  Yet, she never loses sight of the fact that these various parts combined to make a living, thinking person.  Interspersed with the story of her personal journey, she also relates the historical background of anatomical studies.  In a time when dissection was looked upon as something evil, it was a fate assigned only to executed criminals.  Desperate medical students sometimes turned grave robbers in order to obtain specimens for study.  Through Dr. Montross' own experiences with her lab partners and the related stories of medical students of the past, the overwhelming theme of the desire for knowledge, the quest to master the skill of healing, comes through the words. 

For those who have heard morbid stories of anatomy labs and crude jokes about cadavers (my 7^th grade science teacher once regaled the the class with a story of going to a party and being told to turn on a light by pulling a chain—only to find a human hand attached to the end of it), this book offers a different vision.  The medical students in these pages, so eager to learn and so in need of actual bodies for study, view the donated cadavers with respect and reverence.  Dr. Montross and her lab team gave their cadaver a name, Eve, and as they studied the parts of her anatomy, they located the same parts within themselves, realizing as alive as they are, so once was Eve.  Dr. Montross concludes:  “I cannot begin to know what led Eve to give me such a gift, whether it was practicality or altruism or cynicism or love of science or some other, equally unknowable, aspect of her personality or life.  What I do know is that she neither knew me nor knew anything about me, and yet she bequeathed to me this offering, unthinkable for centuries, that has formed the foundations of my ability to heal. . . . her selfless gesture of donation will be my lasting example of how much it is possible to give to a total stranger in the hopes of healing.”    As a medical patient, these words bring hope that all doctors we encounter will have the same reverence for the human body.  As a friend of a dear of old man who left his body to science, these words bring comfort, knowing his gift was so appreciated.