Stiff PA

by Roach,Mary

• ISBN13: 9780393324822
• ISBN10: 0393324826
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-05-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

Stiff is an oddly compelling, often hilarious exploration of the strange lives of our bodies postmortem. For two thousand years, cadavers'”some willingly, some unwittingly'”have been involved in science's boldest strides and weirdest undertakings. They've tested France's first guillotines, ridden the NASA Space Shuttle, been crucified in a Parisian laboratory to test the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin, and helped solve the mystery of TWA Flight 800. For every new surgical procedure, from heart transplants to gender reassignment surgery, cadavers have been there alongside surgeons, making history in their quiet way. In this fascinating, ennobling account, Mary Roach visits the good deeds of cadavers over the centuries'”from the anatomy labs and human-sourced pharmacies of medieval and nineteenth-century Europe to a human decay research facility in Tennessee, to a plastic surgery practice lab, to a Scandinavian funeral directors' conference on human composting. In her droll, inimitable voice, Roach tells the engrossing story of our bodies when we are no longer with them.

Author Biography

Mary Roach's writing has appeared in Salon, Wired, Outside, GQ, Discover, Vogue, and the New York Times Magazine. She lives in San Francisco

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 9
A Head is a Terrible Thing to Waste: Practicing surgery on the dead	p. 19
Crimes of Anatomy: Body snatching and other sordid tales from the dawn of human dissection	p. 37
Life After Death: On human decay and what can be done about it	p. 61
Dead Man Driving: Human crash test dummies and the ghastly, necessary science of impact tolerance	p. 87
Beyond the Black Box: When the bodies of the passengers must tell the story of a crash	p. 113
The Cadaver Who Joined the Army: The sticky ethics of bullets and bombs	p. 131
Holy Cadaver: The crucifixion experiments	p. 157
How to Know if You're Dead: Beating-heart cadavers, live burial, and the scientific search for the soul	p. 167
Just a Head: Decapitation, reanimation, and the human head transplant	p. 199
Eat Me: Medicinal cannibalism and the case of the human dumplings	p. 221
Out of the Fire, Into the Compost Bin: And other new ways to end up	p. 251
Remains of the Author: Will she or won't she?	p. 281
Acknowledgments	p. 293
Bibliography	p. 295
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