Post-mortem Procedures:

by G. A. Gresham, A.F. Turner

Many consider the autopsy to be an antiquated procedure, offering little towards understanding the practice of medicine. It is not unusual for medical students, visiting the post-mortem room for the first time, to ask why post-mortem dissection is done at all. After all, they say, the clinical diagnosis was well established in life; what more is necessary? The first response to this should be that the job of the pathologist is not to confirm the current errors of clinical medicine, but rather to establish the truth. Many discrepancies between clinical and autopsy diagnoses have been, and will continue to be, reported. Furthermore, unsuspected disorders are revealed, enabling a better and fuller understanding of disease associations which may, in time, lead to more effective treatment. There is only one way to perform an autopsy, and that is properly; it should not be carried out in haste. This book attempts to define post-mortem procedure which is not only the dissection of the body but is also the whole management of the dead person, his or her relatives and those concerned with disposal of the body. Photography is an essential part of post-mortem work; the plates in this book represent the efforts of Janet Fendick and Peter Haslam.

Hardcover

Published January 31, 1979