Chapter Summary Of Stiff: The Curious Lives Of Human Cadavers

In Stiff, author Mary Roach examines what happens to a person’s body after they die. There are a variety of choices that an individual or their family can make regarding their body. Although treatment of cadavers has greatly improved over time, a lot of things take place after death. Roach sets out to discover some of the things that may happen to cadavers, knowingly or unknowingly.

In the book Stiff by Mary Roach, many different kinds of situations involving cadavers takes

To the reader it may seem that with this introduction, the book will only be based on what uses a corpse has in science, but in later chapters the book shifts to what has happened to cadavers in the past and other endeavours cadavers have endured, such as cadavers that were used by the military, “Taking shape in the the rifle's’ sights would be men, a series of them, naked and unarmed. That they were naked and unarmed was the less distinctive thing about them. More distinctive was that they were already dead. They had died of natural causes and had been collected--from where is not revealed-- as subjects in an Army Ordnance Department experiment.” (Roach, 131). Cadavers have also been useful in car safety, “Over the past sixty years, the dead have helped the living work out human tolerance limits for skull slammings chest skewerings, knee crammings and gut mashings: all the ugly violent things that happen to a human being in a car crash.” (Roach, 87). Roach covers many things that have happened and that will happen to a person’s body once the person has passed

The book, Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Forensic Lab the Body Farm Where the Dead Do Tell Tales written by Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson, tells of the life of Bill Bass and his forensic cases and adventures as a forensic anthropologist. He studies bones and human corpses to aid the law enforcement in identifying bones from unknown bodies or people. Dr. Bill Bass has also developed and built his own forensic lab, which he named “The Body Farm”. The Body Farm allows his him study the decomposition of dead bodies to better determine information that can be used to help solve crimes. Dr. Bill Bass has lived many places in his life. He lived in Kansas and taught there during the sixties. He also lived in South Dakota where he excavated Indian

In the Casey Anthony case Jeff Ashton who is a former state attorney in Orange county Florida, and also the first prosecutor in the United States to get a conviction based on DNA decided to use a new Forensic method in the Anthony case. The smell of death would be the allowed as evidence for the first time ever. In the trunk of Anthony’s car was a stained area on the carpet and an odor. Ashton stated that the smell was that of human decomposition. That piece of carpet was removed, sealed and sent to Dr. Vass, a forensic anthropologist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Dr. Voss has been studying human decomposition at the University of Tennessee’s “body farm”.

Sequestered in a secret room at the back of Gaines & Son Funeral Home’s crematorium in Erie, she stared at the man, equally annoyed and amazed at his silence. In all her years as a contract killer, she could not recall one single incidence of a mark willing to remain mute under such inhuman pressure.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book. Mary Roach opened my eyes to the world of donating your body to science, and the many different ways it can help society. Stiff made me think about what I want to be done with my body after I die.

All-inclusively, Roach tries to reconstruct the common misconception that people assume that dead bodies have no purpose because after all, they are dead. She does so by explaining the innumerable amount of scientific gains

Tanha Uddin Professor Ohanenye English 1301 17 September 2016 Analysis of Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain by Jessica Mitford There are quite a few things out there in the world that are unknown by most humans, and one such thing was brought to light by Jessica Mitford. Behind the Formaldehyde Curtain is a very detailed passage written by Jessica Mitford, describing the highly unknown process of embalming a corpse goes through before being presented at their funeral. Throughout the passage, Mitford uses description as her way to present the entire information regarding the topic, while using chronological order as a subordinate in order to mildly state the many steps taken, and cause and effect to show the impact embalming had on others rather

Forensic science has come a long way from where it was less than 100 years ago. It has only been relatively recently that the advancement of technology we use, has occurred. The Body Farm, an institute in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a place where dead corpses are left to rot and then studied on how the body decays in different circumstances. Death’s Acre: Inside the Legendary Body Farm tells about the farm from Dr. Bill Bass’ point of view, from the establishment of the farm, to the impact in the world of forensic science the farm has caused. David Pitt and Alynda Wheat offers their insight into the book in their reviews. The Body Farm has been a monumental stepping stone to the advancement of modern day forensic sciences. Dr. Bill Bass, is making

"Death's Acre" revisits the legendary career of a real-life forensic hero, Dr. Bill Bass. He created the famous "Body Farm" at the University of Tennessee, which is the world's only research facility devoted to studying postmortem human decomposition. The study, hard work, and research data gathered at the Body Farm has helped Bass and many other forensic scientists and police solve many gruesome murders and put away some particularly brutal, scary killers. The book is structured mostly around these criminal cases, which give it a gritty true-crime feel, but it also sinks into Dr. Bass's own life, and expresses

Gross PM examination at slaughter houses as well as cattle with suspected clinical manifestations of bTB and died can be used for diagnosis. At necropsy, a tentative diagnosis of bTB can be made by the detection of macroscopic lesions typical of bTB (Ameni et al., 2008).The sensitivity of gross PM examination is affected by the anatomical sites examined and the method practiced (Ameni et al., 2008). Careful examination of LNs (mandibular, medial retropharyngeal, cranial and caudal mediastinal, left and right bronchial, hepatic and mesenteric LNs) and the lungs can result in 95 % of cattle with macroscopic lesions being identified (Ameni et al., 2008).

Professionals in the medical field are required to be part of an incredibly accomplished group, having to go through numerous years of extra training and education to earn their PhD. Educating doctors and nurses the ‘old fashion’ way with real patients or cadavers can cause unnecessary complications in the education process, “even under strict supervision by an expert, it is very difficult for a learning physician to perform a new procedure on a patient for the first time” (Vanchieri). It shows that VR is favorable to cadavers because, “traditional teaching modalities, such as cadaver dissection, prove to be ineffective teaching tools” (Nicholson). Already in society we can see that old fashion methods are on their way out in favor of newer

The bodies of animals were the major source of dissection in the 16th century. Human dissection was really difficult because there were a short supply of bodies used for dissection in the winter. Mainly because the majority of humans that were used for dissection or vivisection were executed criminals. “Anatomic knowledge had been passed down from ancient greek times but largely came from the writings of Galen. This is why it was very impactful when Andreas Vesalius challenged Galenic anatomy in 1543.” (Gaynes,80) Galen had never dissected a dead human body before, he only made observations on injured people. He dissected animals and used his findings to infer the anatomical observations he made by looking at injured people. I assume that

Going to a cadaver lab can be very scary and uncomfortable for some people who don’t know what to expect. For me going to the cadaver lab was very exciting but I was a bit nervous for what the environment would be like and how much you would actually see of the cadaver. I expected the room to be very cold and dark, with no windows. I also pictured it to have stainless steel everywhere and be extremely sterile. For the actual cadaver it self I figured the body would be still covered in skin and the skin would be cyanotic. The body also had more adipose left on it then I thought they would have on it. When I first saw the cadaver I was shocked by how little of skin there was and how much muscle there actually was on the body. I was also shocked