First Cut: A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab

by Albert Howard Carter III

With humor, compassion, and wisdom, Howard Carter recounts the semester he spent watching first-year medical students in a human anatomy lab. From the tentative early incisions of the back, the symbolic weight of extracting the heart, and by the end, the curious mappings of the brain, we embark on a path that is at once frightening, awesome, and finally redemptive.

Genres: Science, Medicine, Nonfiction, Medical

308 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1997

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I missed my opportunity to go to med school a few years ago, and while I am happy with the career I chose, I sometimes wonder 'what if?' I toured a medical school, and of course they showed off their human anatomy lab, a very fascinating sight for sure, as the students were hard at work with their cadaver dissection.
Compared to what I saw there, Carter captures the activities of the anatomy lab perfectly. It has the right balance of technical science terminology and layman explanations to accurately describe what he saw while neither making it too complex for those unfamiliar with the parts of the body nor dumbing it down to lose the interest of people like me, who have taken a few biology courses and know the basics.
The work isn't the sole focus of the book, as that would make for a very dry read and one might as well read an anatomy textbook if that's what is desired. Instead, Carter weaves in stories from the lectures the students hear outside of the lab as well as the interactions among the students, professors, and the people who have chosen to donate their bodies to give the students this opportunity.
An underlying theme to the book is that Carter's father donated his body for this purpose years before but no one in the family knew anything more about what exactly this donation meant or what happened to his remains at the end of the course. By observing the lecture and lab for the entire semester, Carter finally reaches the closure in knowing that his father, a former teacher, continued along that chosen path even in his death.
I found this to be an excellent book and a must read for anyone interested in medical school as an option for his or her future. He includes all the gritty details including how the head and genital regions of the cadavers are handled in the lab, and if you can't stomach reading about it, realize you have to do it in the lab. It turns out this observation occurred 20 years ago in 1989, but the book does not seem dated in the least. My impression from my tour in 2005 is that the basics of the course haven't changed a whole lot, and what he writes about here is most likely happening in medical schools across the country as we speak.

[Marli Dotson · Rating 5 out of 5]

First Cut by Albert Howard Carter III is a fascinating book where you are taken through the first year of medical school’s anatomy lab. From the first dissection (of the muscles of the back) to the last (anatomy of the head, including ears and eyes), Carter describes the trials and accomplishments of first year med students from Emory University in Atlanta. What I like about this book is that as someone with some experience dissecting but no experience with dissecting human anatomy, the language used makes sense and is descriptive enough so you could actually learn something. I enjoyed this book, and I would recommend it to anyone who is curious about anatomy or who is thinking about going to medical school.

[Ayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

After taking an anatomy and physiology course in school, I found this book to help make concrete many of the body systems we covered. Unlike the students in the book we did not dissect human cadavers, actually I didn't dissect anything, having missed the one dissection, but as a CNA I have cared for newly deceased patients. He brought humanity and an awareness of what fresh medical students go through in their learning of the human body and its functions. He also brought the idea of what to do with our bodies when we die, why not donate so that other extraordinary students can learn and become proficient in healing the bodies and hearts of those they come across. I am planning to give this book to my previous anatomy teacher.

[Tina Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found the book description above to be as accurate a synopsis as you can hope to find so there's no point in me trying to improve upon that. I will tell you instead what resounded with me. The author is first and foremost a writer and a professor of literature. His love of language and his genuine curiosity engaged me from the get go. His reflection is almost meditative in style and I appreciated both his wonder and his ability to communicate the complex emotional experience with candour and compassion. I liked reading from his point of view. The students themselves have a much tighter focus than the author for obvious reasons; allowing the narrative of what it means to donate your body to science to be more comprehensive. And that was a major objective of the book. The author's father donated his body to science and although Carter had no objection to that fact he still felt compelled to understand the process. He believed that observing the anatomy lab might help him work through his grief and he was correct. A recurring theme in the book was generosity; from the generosity of the donors and their families to the generosity of the students who welcomed Carter into their world and shared with him experiences I can only describe as awe inspiring. How does it feel to hold a human heart in your cupped hands? While I really don't want to find out for myself, a part of me can't help wondering. I'm attracted to books that make me stop and think, Wow! What would that feel like? This was one of those books and I have to say I wasn't disappointed at all.

[John Hewlett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty good over all. I have read several books about first year gross anatomy in US medical schools. This is something that tends to be a rather American phenomenon and in terms of addressing the psychological affects that cadavers have on students as they peer into the machinery of their own bodies this book probably does one of the best jobs as it follows individual students through an entire semester. It also focuses on the evolution of the student's thoughts, fears, trepidation etc over the course of 16 weeks of intense dissection. Occasionally I found the authors perspective on things rather odd to the point of being borderline creepy. The book to some degree was motivated by the author trying to understand what happened to his own father's body after donating it to a medical school for dissection and research.

[Lizzie · Rating 4 out of 5]

He’s a writer who regretted never going to medical school, so he arranged to audit a first year anatomy class. It’s a combination of scientific descriptions of human anatomy, using medieval illustrations, and his thoughts about the metaphors of the body and observations of the students’ experiences. They start out tentative and become comfortable with the bodies assigned to them, giving them names and speculating about their lives. One is a woman who was 100 when she died.
He describes the disturbing details of how various body parts including genitalia and brains are handled, in a straightforward way. I learned a lot.

[Abigail Hill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read First cut written by Carter. This book shows the inside of an anatomy lab. Usually when you think of medical you think of doctors and nurses but this book takes you back to the untalked about place in this medical field. The book is narrated by the author who observed first year medical students as they learn and he realizes something about his father. Carter has always wondered what happened to his father's body after donating his body to medical research. Carter is a professor at a nearby college but he takes a semester off to go observe some of the medical students in the anatomy lab. In the book Carter explains the lectures that would take place in the class but these aren’t your normal lectures they explain how to remove a different part from a body. But the book is not all about lectures is the lessons that are learned in the class and how the students interact with one another and their cadavers ( the bodies and the sharp tool) Also in the book it’s not just medical terms he explains it in a way that most people would understand so most people could read it but I would recommend it for people who are interested in the medical field and looking into it. I liked how there’s a bigger meaning behind the book it’s not just a guy looking into an anatomy lab it’s a bigger behind the whole book. The book does drone a little bit which maybe might be boring to some people.

[Sarah · Rating 1 out of 5]

Overall, I didn't enjoy this book at all. When I first picked up this First Cut, I thought it would be a great, interesting read that gave good insight into the medical field and how it feels to experience the human anatomy lab in medical school. However, I found myself unable to follow the narration many times throughout the book, and I felt that the author spent too much time analyzing things, and not enough time actually trying to understand what it's like to be a part of an anatomy lab. The author acted merely as an observer while he was writing this novel, and because of that, the experiences that he relayed felt very disconnected from those of the students. To me, it felt as though Carter was speaking too much like a professor, and not as a person who is experiencing the participation in a human anatomy lab for the first time. He spent many times throughout the book quoting other writers or going on philosophical tangents that were often hard to follow and seemed oddly placed. As a whole, I felt that the book read too much like a disjointed textbook, and I did not enjoy it at all. Although the topic of a human anatomy lab is interesting to me as someone in the forensics field, the way in which this book was written made it hard to enjoy and learn about it.

[Donna · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an okay read, and only interesting because I am starting medical school next week. It is for a very specific audience. It's written from the viewpoint of an English professor who is interested in surveying the events in a first year medical student anatomy lab. I felt like he was trying to hard to make it poetic, but he did do a good job once in a while relaying some of the emotions that may be felt throughout cadaver dissections. There was a creepy moment when he seemed obsessed with the beauty of one of the younger female students only to later reveal that he was probably as old as the parents of the students. Not quite sure what he was going for there.

[Ike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book in my college library. At the time I was a athletic training student and taking several anatomy classes. These included a couple of brief hands on experiences with cadavers. I picked up the book to get a feel for what med student's go through.

The book painted a wonderfull picture of the dynamic between student's and those who donated their bodies to science.

I would recommend it to anyone in an anotomy related field or preparing for med school.

[Sue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great. I've been yearning and searching for a book like this one ever since I saw the movie Gross Anatomy. Nothing gross about it -- more like miraculous, simply miraculous.
***
What I didn't like: a little too "wordy," in the manner of a novel.

I also did not like the abrupt changes in text presentation. We read along, the story is great and then turn the page to an illustration. The story is interrupted, in magazine-style, to describe the graphic.

[Amber Risen · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I was a little apprehensive when starting this book. However, as I flew through all the chapters I began to enjoy it more. I am currently in the same shoes as the students he writes about. I find this story very relatable and has answered many of the questions and concerns that I have had myself about the bodies from the gross lab. This book opened my eyes and made me see them in a whole new light.

[Thea · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anatomy is cool.

[Mary Whisner · Rating 5 out of 5]

An English professor spends his sabbatical with first-year med students. Fascinating -- for the anatomy, for the look at a particular type of education, for the humanity.