Anatomists hired people to remove bodies from the graves in order to study human anatomy. This type of work was seen by some as immoral and dishonorable because of popular religious beliefs related to the handling of the dead. Anatomists were dedicated to their work because they understood that it was the only real way to study the human body. Today, doctors and medical students who are studying the human body deal with death by objectifying cadavers in order to avoid any emotional connection to their work. Hours after a person has died, its body begins to decompose. How a body decays depends on many different factors such as the environment, type of burial, the weather and much more. The scent of a corpse is often disturbing and overwhelming. To make the work less uncomfortable, doctors who work with cadavers use euphemisms and try to see the value and even the beauty in the work they are doing. Maggots, bacteria and beetles cover the body and you can hear them from two feet away. Embalming is used to provide the dead with some dignity by making them appear peaceful and presentable. Cadavers have been used for a variety of medical and technological purposes. For example, cadavers are extremely important to creating a safe, death-proof car. They’ve been used because they don’t feel pain and in crash tests, they want to see how the body can be damaged in a car crash. In the past, pigs were used because their organs are similar to a human’s. However, because they are not human’s, using cadavers is preferable.
"My mom was never a cadaver; no person ever is. You are a person and then you cease to be a person, and a cadaver takes your place." (12)
"For those who must deal with human corpses regularly, it is easier (and, I suppose, more accurate) to think of them as objects, not people." (21)
"There is a passage in the Buddhist Sutra on Mindfulness called the Nine Cemetery Contemplations. Apprentice monks are instructed to meditate on a series of decomposing bodies in the charnel ground, starting with a body 'swollen and blue and festering,' progressing to one 'being eaten by ... different kinds of worms,' and moving on to a skeleton, 'without flesh and blood, held together by the tendons.' The monks were told to keep meditating until they were calm and a smile appeared on their faces."(69)
"I find the dead easier to be around than the dying. They are not in pain, not afraid of death. There are no awkward silences and conversations that dance around the obvious. They aren't scary. The half hour I spent with my mother as a dead person was easier by far than the many hours I spent with her as a live person dying and in pain." (98)
"The anonymity of body parts facilitates the necessary dissociations of cadaveric research: This is not a person. This is just tissue. It has no feelings, and no one has feelings for it. It's okay to do things to it which, were it a sentient being, would constitute torture." (105)
I've had a difficult time reading "Stiff," mostly because the images that come to mind through its descriptive language have made me feel uncomfortable. Having imagined my mother in these stages of decay, I hit a wall with this book and refused to keep going. A couple of days ago, I decided that I had no choice but to finish and so I forced myself to read the book. One thing that struck me was how important it is for doctors to objectify the people that they work on (dead or alive) otherwise, they would be too emotionally engaged to carry out their work.This reminded me of the pregnancy and birth unit where healthworker's, doctors and midwives are required to perform highly complicated medical procedures without becoming too emotionally attached, otherwise, they may not be able to carry out their jobs effectively. While I understand the need for this emotional detachment, I still believe that doctors who work on cadavers must always remember that they are working with human remains and treat those remains with a sense of dignity and respect.
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