LOVE IT TO DEATH

...and a piece of art







While not exactly a light (summer) read, Christine Montross's gross anatomy 101 and it's philosophical and moral implications for the living is a must-read for those who wonder about what it takes to be a doctor, and the much larger implications of the way western civilization feels about death, and the body.
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Montross, a first time author with Body of Work, weaves an incredibly graphic yet tender look at
what is considered to be a necessary right of passage for medical students, but
which would make 95% of the populace gag.
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After all, carving up embalmed, leathery, mottled and downright grotesque
specimens of former human beings takes a special kind of (live) human being.
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The details described by Montross should bring out the horror factor in just about everyone who reads this treatise on the dissection of a cadaver that Montross named "Eve," but the triumph is the way the author turns a Frankensteinen subject matter into a gentle en joiner as to what makes us alive.
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Montross comes to have a real empathy for "Eve," a woman she never knew in life, but knows very intimately in death.
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Interestingly, although Montross and her med school class spent many months rooting through bodies and all major organs, few of the students would go on to have any surgical or internal medicine practice.
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Montross became a psychiatrist, and she writes that perhaps her inside knowledge of the body may help her understand the mind, the fundamental and basic humanness of the being.
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And since this is shaping up as a summer where already a lot of Baby Boomers have taken (death) on the chin-Farrah, MJ, Billy May, etc.-reading this book and reflecting on what it is to be living might just be a prescient thing to do.