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

by Christine Montross

A "gleaming, humane" (The New York Times Book Review) memoir of the relationship between a cadaver named Eve and a first-year medical student Medical student Christine Montross felt nervous standing outside the anatomy lab on her first day of class. Entering a room with stainless-steel tables topped by corpses in body bags was initially unnerving. But once Montross met her cadaver, she found herself intrigued by the person the woman once was and fascinated by the strange, unsettling beauty of the human form. They called her Eve. The story of Montross and Eve is a tender and surprising examination of the mysteries of the human body, and a remarkable look at our relationship with both the living and the dead.

Genres: Nonfiction, Medicine, Memoir, Medical, Science, Death, Biography Memoir

304 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 2007

About the author

Christine Montross is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behaviour at Brown University and a practising inpatient psychiatrist with an MFA in poetry. Her writing has appeared in literary journals and women’s magazines as well as the New York Times. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island.

Reviews

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

When she was training to become a doctor in Rhode Island, Montross and her anatomy lab classmates were assigned an older female cadaver they named Eve. Eve taught her everything she knows about the human body. Montross is also a published poet, as evident in her lyrical exploration of the attraction and strangeness of working with the remnants of someone who was once alive. She sees the contrasts, the danger, the theatre, the wonder of it all:

“Stacked beside me on my sage green couch: this spinal column that wraps into a coil without muscle to hold it upright, hands and feet tied together with floss, this skull hinged and empty. A man’s teeth.”

“When I look at the tissues and organs responsible for keeping me alive, I am not reassured. The wall of the atrium is the thickness of an old T-shirt, and yet a tear in it means instant death. The aorta is something I have never thought about before, but if mine were punctured, I would exsanguinate, a deceptively beautiful word”

All through her training, Montross has to remind herself to preserve her empathy despite a junior doctor’s fatigue and the brutality of the work (“The force necessary in the dissections feels barbarous”), especially as the personal intrudes on her career through her grandparents’ decline and her plans to start a family with her wife – which I gather is more of a theme in her next book, Falling into the Fire, about her work as a psychiatrist. I get through a whole lot of medical reads, as any of my regular readers will know, but this one is an absolute stand-out for its lyrical language, clarity of vision, honesty and compassion.

[Mikey B. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating!

A fascinating account of this "acceptable taboo" subject - namely, the medical dissection of the human body by medical students. This one is up close and personal, because the author is one of the students. She takes us through the entire semester - or more precisely the spiritual journey she undergoes. We follow Ms. Montross through her development - both human and medical. She is obviously anguished by what she has to do in the medical lab - and her reactions and exposé give the book great beauty. We can feel her growth, she makes incredible connections between her lab work and internship with live patients. She realizes that the extreme awkwardness and cutting to exposure ALL parts of the human body is also a preparation for dealing with real people who may be terminally ill, have grotesque disfigurations, etc...

Like all medical students she must learn to balance feelings and discomfort when listening to patients - but not at the loss of giving just a cold clinical diagnosis. We also get a sense of the mental and physical stress that these students undergo - not all of them make it through the entire term. They are in their own special club - and those outside the club cannot properly relate to them. Ms. Montross gives us wonderful insights into this club.

Another aspect of the book I liked was its lack of criticisms. This is not a book that rails against the medical profession and those in it. It treats all from the body undergoing dissection to the students, doctors and patients with a great deal of humanism and respect.

She also gives a history of anatomical dissection and how bodies were acquired (more often stolen) in past eras. Given the subject this is not easy reading - it is necessarily morbid. I did not have nightmares, but the words in the book remain with you - as does any good book.

[Tauna · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as one of four required readings for my Medical Reading section of HOSA competition this year, and I am so grateful that I did. This is a memoir that takes place during a first year medical student's experiences in her anatomy class dissecting a cadaver. The writing is fluid and easily transitions between the writer's time in the lab and hospital and medical history involving the evolution of dissection. I was amazed and entranced by this book, and found myself palpating my neck for my sternocleidomastoid as the author describes locating it on herself while finding it in her cadaver.
This book is very well described in its subtitle: a meditation on mortality from the human anatomy lab. I found it to be profound, enlightening, and moving and would encourage anyone who's ever been curious about human dissection to read it. (Although there is a lot of medical jargon, and those without basic knowledge of latin medical word roots might get lost.)

[Jp · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this book right before I began anatomy lab because my mom sent it to me. My favorite part is probably the beginning, when she's describing going to medical school for the first time, getting a briefcase full of bones, and meeting eccentric Brown Medical Students. Apart from that, I have to say I couldn't identify with much of what else she wrote. I feel like she tried to make a bigger deal out of dissecting human bodies then is normally the case. To quote, and this is after taking out a human heart and testing out the functions of the valves (which prevent backflow of blood through the heart much like a parachute):
"To visualize the valves' function, Lex and I decide to take a heart to the sink and pour water through the pulmonary trunk toward the ventricle. THe semilunar valves work like a dream, catching the water as sails catch wind, closing fast and preventing any leakage. It is astonishing, almost impossible to believe."

I don't know, I found it less than almost impossible to believe, but maybe that's why I'm at the University of Toledo Medical School and not Brown. If you're interested in how the body works and you want a sort of coming of age story combined then this book is great. I did enjoy reading it, but I was disappointed by all the exaggeration when I finally started doing dissections of my own.

Granted, there's a lot of incredibly cool things about a human body, and I should use this opportunity to name some. One of the first things I saw that was amazing was the thoracolumbar fascia, which is just a fancy name for a tough sheet of tissue that is used as a sort of (honestly, I don't know all of what it's for) anchoring point for some muscles, and protective covering. The reason I think it's cool is because it basically looks and feels identical to thin fiberglass, which helps support the analogy of man to machine. In a similar vein, all the tendons of the arms and feet act just like strings on a puppet. Anatomy is probably impossible to properly describe through words alone, I recommend getting a body or going on tour at a local cadaver lab.

[Muhammed Hebala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Instantly became a favorite.
A great memoir about a very sensitive subject, and from a sensitive person.
As a doctor and a cardiac surgeon this book touched me deeply.
I felt like i have written it myself with all these feelings and thoughts.
In the anatomy lab we dissect cadavers as we should do, but more importantly we dissect our lives, our bodies, our existence.
This memoir is very personal, deeply personal and existential that it touches every reader.
I will read it again and again, as you should.

[Tom Quinn · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely eloquent, sobering while at the same time comforting. Anything more I could say would only detract from Montross's gorgeous prose.

5 stars. Montross does the impossible: she puts the indescribable into words and gives a lucid, tender, heartfelt account of the inexpressible. It is a perfectly balanced juxtaposition of body and emotion, of human form and human spirit.

[Tammy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Perhaps not the book to read during a pandemic, interesting none the less. Some information I already knew, some I did not. More interesting, the author has a masters in POETRY and is accepted into medical school. No science background what so ever required. Perchance the arts and the biological sciences together do make for a better physician and in this case psychiatrist.

[Bryan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kind of a mixed book for me. The author makes a binary distinction between the reactions of students to the anatomy lab; I definitely did not fall into the same category, and occasionally was annoyed by Montross's insistent language making her reactions seem like the "proper" ones to have. Growing up with a family that openly talked about human dissection at the dinner table (mom's an anatomy teacher) likely already prepared me emotionally for the dissections.
The examination of the history of anatomy study is what saved the book from the tossing pile for me. Nice to see that Montross did her research. That being said, I'm curious to know what dissection manual her school used. I was stunned when the instructor said that they would be removing the heart on the first day in the anatomy lab, mainly due to the work involved with getting to that point from a new body combined with the students' inexperience in dissection and the fine structures that could easily be destroyed by a slip of the scissors. And the method described for removing the lungs seemed unnecessarily dangerous to the students, but these thoughts are more personal than critical of the book.
Overall, a nice book, tailor made for a gift to an incoming medical student; however, not quite as good of an examination on the experience as other books could be.

[Anna Longsdorf · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the most beautiful books I’ve ever read. Montross is poetic and eloquent in her writing and her outlook on the topic of cadaver dissection. This book made me feel so much better about going into the lab soon. Honestly got a little emotional at times because of how thought-provoking and passionate it was.

[Reid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I admit to being somewhat reluctant to review this book, as if to do so is to finally let go of the experience of reading it, much like writing the epitaph of a loved one might mean another step in letting go of the fact of a life. This is one of those rare reads that got into my marrow and changed (at least for a time, if not forever) my way of thinking about things; not merely mortality and the relationship of my physical being to that slippery concept of what constitutes a "self", but much deeper truths.

For among the many questions raised by Body of Work is this: what part of what I consider to be me is contained in my body? Most of us intellectual, Western, post-Freudian types have thoroughly absorbed the dictum that whatever may be the essence of who we are is contained in the mind, which is in the brain, which is in the head, and there's an end to it. When the brain is dead, our identities are no longer contained in this hunk of muscle, bone, and guts. Either the "soul" dies out completely or continues on in some ephemeral form, but it has entirely flown this body. This is what we, most of us, have concluded from the evidence at hand.

As a former ICU nurse, I have had the privilege to be present at the death of many people, have seen them move from the state of animation to disanimation, from living to most clearly dead. I have felt the body go from warm to cool, and the eyes from live coals to empty sockets. As a clinician, with no true emotional stake in this person's living or dying, why was I always moved by this experience? Why was there a feeling almost of holiness (I can find no better word) at being present there? More recently, I was at the bedside of my cousin when he was declared brain dead and let go. But how many of these have I actually seen die? Many, including my cousin, lost all brain function long before I ever saw them, but their bodies were still ticking along, automatically (or, more accurately, autonomically): breathing, heart beating, hands and faces and feet moving spasmodically. At what point were they no longer alive?

Christine Montross was, to our good fortune, a writer long before she decided to return to school to become a physician. As part of that training, she had to pass through the proving ground of the gross anatomy lab, where she was required to dissect a human body. Eve, the name she and her partners give her (mysteriously, she had no navel, thus her name came to her naturally) has clearly been dead for some time, but is well-preserved. Nonetheless, there is no life in her. She is the wrong color, is cold, and looks distinctly dead. Why, then, is Montross so reluctant to cut and saw and prod and pry into this lifeless slab of a former human? Why would we all recoil at such a violation? Why, for that matter, don't we just put Granny on the curb for pick-up with the garbage and compost? What do we have invested in the sanctity of the human body, and why? Why do we have such elaborate funerary rites with open caskets and flowers and prayers?

It is worth observing that when gesturing to ourselves, we do not point to our heads but to our hearts, and when we feel something deeply, we feel it in our "guts". Buddhist cosmology is quite clear that the beingness of an individual is carried throughout the body and not merely in our heads. Even in that culture, though bodies were (and are) sometimes left in the open to rot or to be consumed by carrion, this is done with great ritual and with honor to them as great teachers. While still alive, the Buddha said that all things could be learned from "this fathom-long body". How is this suddenly untrue when we die?

This is the journey on which this book takes us. From the first cut to the last, the author wonders what the nature of her fear is, her reluctance and revulsion, wonders how she can so desecrate a body yet, for the sake of being a good physician, how she can refuse. Eve is a person to her, as she would be to most of us, I suspect. Montross intersperses these reflections with her investigation into the history of human dissection, and a rather checkered past it is, with governments declaring that certain miscreants will be further defiled by being donated for this purpose and grave-robbing being a not-uncommon method for acquiring subjects. The Catholic church, extremely powerful in Europe in the heyday of anatomical research and vociferously opposed to the practice, plays a huge part in this history.

But Eve is the star, and Montross's relationship to her as she is dismantling her the focus of this superb book. We find ourselves drawn into her world with our own questions and fears and qualms. Gently but inexorably, she shines a light on our bodies and our cherishing of them in a way that leaves us moved and shaken, yet feeling more than ever a sense of the glory of our own being, of the mystery of that being, of how unfathomable the connection between what is flesh and what is, purely and finally, us.

[Toni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Montross' story of her hands on experience in dissecting a cadaver dubbed Eve to learn anatomy grows monotonous with each dissection tale and learning. What saves the book is interwoven history. Dissections were at one time a public event. I was more fascinated with the historical rendering of the supply of bodies for dissection via grave digging, than I was of reading about the slow dissection of Eve's body. Of course, freshness was an issue in the days lacking “cold storage”, thus the newly dead garnered more money for grave robbers providing the cadavers. Apparently, folks in those days felt digging up recently killed criminals was less offensive. Interesting tidbits, including the revelation that “dura matter” literally translates to “tough mother” are strewn throughout enough to keep one reading to the end.

[Marvel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting but at times somewhat dry due to all the medical terms, etc. - but I would recommend this book to anyone that has an interest in medicine, anatomy, or the history of same. I like it but it took me a while to get through it - reading a bit at a time.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25 -- thoughtful and meditative and challenging, pondering unusual issues, ethics, the poetic nature of the body, the exploration of the history and underlying issues of human dissection and the treatment of human remains. Lovely.

[Lily W · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed the combination of both personal and historical anecdotes Montross includes

[Tammy · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book makes me really grateful for the experience of having a cadaver lab in undergrad.

it was a great anatomy refresher with some lovely quotes and pictures at the start of every chapter.

i’ve learned of the history and places of anatomy.

her bittersweet recollection of her grandparents remind me of my own grandmother.

[dejah_thoris · Rating 4 out of 5]

Everything you ever wanted to know (and then some) about surviving the gross anatomy lab. Montross embraces the subject and her subjectivity throughout her experience while writing like a close friend. If your curiosity outweighs your disgust, this book offers a definitive account of an experience common to all doctors but described by few.

[Martha-Grace McLean · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was required reading, but good! Very insightful towards the historical business and educational use of cadavers. I thought a lot about looking at dead bodies which was very unpleasant, but perhaps the point?

Had some bars. “The boundaries of life were beginning to extend, granting dead bodies a role of importance and a chance to improve the lives of those still living” “dismantling of the body gives birth to our ability to make the sick and broken body whole” “But the problem arises when instead of setting aside our natural reactions, they are denied altogether. Then the culture simply becomes superhuman. And thus is the realm of the superhuman there is no room for human frailty, and admission of it by one risks revealing the illusion of the many. So no one speaks up, and as a result each person believes that she is alone in her experience. To that end, we are left in a profession of untouchable greatness and infallibility, but one whose members kill themselves more than others.”

[Mikayla Leighton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed the emotional perspective of what it takes to be a doctor. Medical school is often discussed from the viewpoint of the classes being hard, rather than learning how to deal with death.

[Kristin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another book that made me contemplate my decision not to pursue my dreams of attending medical school. This book was very similar to the last book I read about the Human Anatomy Lab, 'First Cut'. In fact, as I read, my mind decided the two books were 2 different perspectives of the same class. It was many books ago that I read 'First Cut', so I didn't remember the precise details of that book, but in the back of my mind, I recall a 'fat man' who was replaced midway through the semester due to decomposition as well as a group whose cadaver was lacking a navel. It was the latter cadaver who was the feature of 'Body of Work', because while the author of 'First Cut' was an observer writing a book, this author was one of the students doing the dissection, and her observations are made knowing that this is her future.
Like the authors of every other med school book I have read, Montross was not a fresh-out-of-undergrad naive student when she embarked on the medical school journey. I think having experiences beyond 16+ consecutive years of schooling in her immediate history is what makes this book good. Montross already has a stable romantic relationship, a past work experience, and the opportunity to make the most of her medical school experience by travelling to the places where the value of dissection were first contemplated.
What I also liked about this book was that while it followed the semester chronologically as they explored the body, Montross includes anecdotes from her past and present, outside of her medical career, and also stories of her experience during later stages of her education where she needed to apply knowledge and emotions first conquered in the anatomy lab.

All in all, a great read, and I definitely recommend reading it with 'First Cut'

[Chloe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is astoundingly beautiful. Gruesome in some ways, yes, but really beautiful. It captures the awe and mystery of the human body, the unnaturalness of breaking down a human body, and how doing so is vital if one wants to understand how a body works, so that live bodies can one day be brought back to wholeness and health. I was so touched by how Montross describes her relationship with Eve, a body she comes to know intimately while in the course of a human anatomy course in medical school. I loved the history tidbits that Montross ties into her narrative, and her own relationships and friendships both inside and outside of the lab. I almost cried at the end of the book, when Montross describes how her grandparents dealt with their illnesses late in life. Honestly, I probably would have cried if I wasn't reading through that bit in a shared office on my lunch break. I will say, though... this book is not one to be read over meals. But read it anyway, because it's beautiful, and you'll come out of it more appreciative for the human body, and modern medicine, and the compassion that can exist between two strangers, even when one of them is no longer alive.

[Blake Charlton · Rating 4 out of 5]

thoughtful, well researched, written in delicately poetic prose. many times in this book i found myself nodding, remembering my own gross anatomy days. montross perfectly captures the horror and the wonders; however, she tends to overstate the importance of philosophic anatomic study for the acquisition of clinical skill. this accurately represents a first year medical students misconception of anatomies importance. to some extent this perspective is fitting to the narrative, but it is also inappropriate for a narrator initiated into to clinical practice and indeed entering into psychiatric residency (in which anatomic knowledge has very little importance). however, though bothered by this aspect of the book it did not stop me from enjoying it and learning much. i very much look forward to seeing dr. montross's next work.

[James Sorensen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Montross presents an in depth look at human dissection. The book describes her first semester in medical school and the dissection of a female cadaver her group has named Eve. Ms. Montross also presents a history of human dissection. Ms. Montross is an adequate writer but does paint a fascinating picture of what it looks like and feels like to explore the human body. Explores the full range of emotions that effect the new medical student. Can make some readers a little queasy at times but read well worth the effort.

[Grumpus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is based upon the audio download from [http://www.Audible.com]

Narrated by: Renée Raudman

Documenting the rite of passage for all medical students in the anatomy lab...dissection of a human cadaver. Throw in a little history of dissection, some medical terminology, a great narrator, and some emotional anecdotes; allow to soak in as needed and you have a recipe for a good read (or listen)!

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This hit home for me. A favorite . Not very grotesque at all. More insightful on the journey of a first year of medical school in the anatomy lab that all doctors have endured. A very emotional , and interesting experience for those who have been through it, and for those who have not, the book will give you appreciation for those who have seen death in front of them.

[Woolfhead · Rating 4 out of 5]

Poetic, thoughtful, and, at times, a little bit gross - a view of the rigors of anatomy class combined with meditations on death, love, the history of medicine, what it means to be human, and what it means to become a physician. Really well-done, although not a book to read while eating.

[Leona · Rating 4 out of 5]

First year medical student's "meditations on mortality from the human anatomy lab." The book was very good but I find it very interesting that there was not one mention of God or intelligent design.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

incredible. 5 stars.

(a bit of personal stuff)

I'm in an uncomfortable period of life where I don't feel aligned with many things in my life and am struggling to find alignment within the cramped space that is the reality of life in the United States. or maybe I'm just having an early mid-life crisis. either way, I hate it. anyway, one aspect that continues to be a source of discomfort is my current career path. I make substantial $ but have not felt fulfilled or as if I belong in this field; medicine seems to be something naturally drawing my attention as a (radically, unfortunately) different career path. thus, whenever in the bookstore or the library I gravitate to the health science section and one day recently at a Half Priced Books, I picked up this book in addition to a bunch of other medical books.

(back to thoughts on book)

a liberal arts major goes to medical school to become a psychiatrist and what follows in this book are her reflections as she dissects a body lovingly given the name of Eve, cares for patients near death, endures the fatigue of intense schooling, and studies the historical origins of dissection abroad in Italy. there are some gruesome parts in this book that make even the writer cringe herself but the meditations on life and death are elegant, deep, and not so "ivory tower" that the writer's ruminations are unrelatable.

"The only way out of through" is a phrase I have quite liked to return to when trying to solve a difficult problem; one has to look the storm straight in the ugly eyes in order to understand, study it, and eventually find a way out of it. in some ways this book reminds me of this simple jingle of sound bite wisdom. the writer, and presumably all medical students, must go through the grim process of dissecting each part of the human body in order to fully become a healer, a doctor (yes, in addition to passing many other formal tests too). but it is through this unrelenting experience the writer uncovers so much perspective -changing and reverent wisdom which she shares in this pseudo-memoir of a book. and she's recorded it here in this book so the rest of us don't necessarily have to go observe a dissection or dissect a person in a cadaver lab in order to better appreciate the complexity of human life.

[Elise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review of Body of Work by Christine Montross

Body of work, by Christine Montross, is an autobiography written with care and a high amount of detail. It’s a story about the author’s experience as a first-year medical student and gives the readers a look into the mindset and morality of those who work in the field.
This novel starts out with Christine writing about her time in medical school, specifically her time with her group dissecting their cadaver, whom they name Eve. She expands upon details like the function of certain body parts, and why things are the way they are. Frequently she puts in an interesting fact or two to spice things up; and as the reader reads further into the novel, Christine inputs the history of dissection and anatomy. She also includes the struggles of what the students who were interested in this topic had to go through to further advance the type of science they studied to get it to where it is now. She writes about people who would kill others just so they could sell the bodies to science due to the lack of “fresh” cadavers to study. She touches on morality and the feelings between right or wrong in the dissector's minds. And near the very end, she gets more personal and expresses her family history involving illness.
I think that anyone who likes to explore the unknown and find explanations for things that aren’t common knowledge would be interested in this novel. Anyone who’s interested in biology, anatomy or just the human body in general, would gain a lot from reading this. Christine’s writing is surprisingly very entertaining to read, even with the topic being human dissection. She adds subtle hints of humor that lighten the mood and can re-direct some more easily disturbed readers. However, I do think that this subject can be hard to wrap your head around if you aren’t frequently thinking about this type of stuff. The vocabulary is more advanced than your average quick read book, it’s the type of novel that when you read a line of text, you have to re-read it to fully understand what the author, Christine, is trying to say. Nevertheless, I think that Christine did an amazing job making it easier to navigate through the novel, and transition smoothly from one subject to the next. Overall, it was a read that kept me thinking throughout the whole experience and one that I enjoyed.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very enlightening memoir, not only about anatomy, but about an obscure part of medicine: the history of dissection and the procural of cadavers. Montross takes us through her anatomy class where she must dissect a cadaver and reflects on how this disturbing and disorienting process impacts her relationship with the human body, medicine, and how she provides care to others. She explores the muddy moral waters of the end of life and what does it mean to be no longer alive or to be dead, and are those the same things? While this is at times a hard book to read, it is important to read. She details the process of cutting into a dead person, and while she is reverential towards her subject, the process is still a disturbing one. Through this she shows how dissection allows future doctors to not only learn the body, but confront the discomfort of handling bodies, both alive and dead, and how they develop "detached compassion" to best guide their patients to make tough decisions about their or a loved one's health.

The discomfort not only comes from the process, but how cadavers have been (and in some places still are) procured. There have been many cultural taboos about disturbing the dead and most cultures are against using humans for dissection. Doctors and hospitals turned to unsavory methods to get their supply. Unsurprisingly, it was often the poor, criminals, and minorities who were preyed upon; mostly in the belief that their afterlife is not as important as rich white people's. Montross also explores the paradox of belief surrounding dissections.

This is not a knee-slapper of a book, but it is very interesting to know how med students become doctors and what is asked of them. I appreciated Montross's insights and connections to her own life and medicine's history.

[Elizabeth Slabinski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would probably give this a 3.5 if that were an option.
I am currently a first year medical student who recently underwent the anatomy/cadaver lab. This was an assigned reading for the semester for us to do reflective writing. Dr. Montross' book had me back and forth between thinking "Wow, I feel this way" to sometimes rolling my eyes at the romanticization and dramatization of anatomy lab. For me, the first few chapters were highly relatable and accurately described my own anxieties, worries, and thoughts about dissection. However, the book began to lose me around when she got into the history of dissection. To me, there was not enough acknowledgement of the ethical issues surrounding the history of medicine, particularly on how individuals acquired bodies and would sometimes perform vivisections, and instead focused on the wonder of anatomy and glorified what was done to overcome barriers towards medical advancement. I would have preferred a more balanced approach. From this point of the book on, I noticed more and more points where Dr. Montross' experience and perspective of lab did not compare to my own. I also felt that some chapters were less cohesive than others - sometimes wandering around the point and jumping to and from memories in a confusing way. That being said, this book gave me a lot to think about and reflect on perhaps especially in the places where I disagreed.

I think this book would best be enjoyed by someone who has never experienced a human dissection lab. While I personally felt that the description of lab was too flowery and tried to make it more deep than it is, I also recognize that this was someone's impression and experience of a cadaver lab. It just wasn't mine.