HW # 51 - Second Third of COTD Book

Second Third of Stiff

Precis:

The second third of the book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers tells how cadavers have been used to find the cause of airplane crashes. In the case of TWA Flight 800, which crashed in 1996, the fact that bodies were found in tact in the water with burns only on their backs caused by fuel catching fire on the water proved that the plane did not have a bomb (which would have blown up the bodies) and was not hit by a missile (which would have caused burns on fronts and sides). This part of the book also tells about cadavers being used for military studies like testing more humanitarian bullets that could stop enemy soldiers without killing them, improving chest armor, and testing boots to be worn when clearing land mines. There is a section about a doctor in the 1930s who “crucified” cadavers to try to prove that a cloth called the Shroud of Turin was the one Jesus was wearing when he died. Another doctor about ten years ago used live people instead of cadavers with leather straps instead of nails to disprove the other doctor’s theories. The last chapter in the third section is about a “beating heart cadaver,” which is one that can be used for transplants of the heart and other organs since the brain is dead. It also talks about the huge fear of being buried alive before the perfecting of the stethoscope, the debate about where in the body the soul is located, and the fact that it was only in 1974 that brain death (and not the stopping of the heart) was made the legal definition of death.

Quotes:
For Shanahan, the hardest thing about Flight 800 was that most of the bodies were relatively whole. “Intactness bothers me much more that the lack of it,” he says. The sorts of things most of us can’t imagine seeing or coping with – severed hands, legs, scraps of flesh – Shanahan is more comfortable with. “That way, it’s just tissue. You can put yourself in that frame of mind and get on with your job.” (p. 114)

Could airlines do a better job of making their planes fire-safe? You bet they could. They could install more emergency exits, but they won’t, because that means taking out seats and losing revenue. They could install sprinkler systems or build crash-worthy fuel systems of the type used on military helicopters. But they won’t because both these options would add too much weight. More weight means higher fuel costs.” (p. 125)

To allay patients’ considerable fears of live burial…eighteenth and nineteenth-century physicians devised a diverting roster of methods for verifying death…The soles of the feet were sliced with razors, and needles jammed beneath toenails…One French clergyman recommended thrusting a red-hot poker up…”the rear passage.” (p. 171)

Analytical paragraph:

This part of the book told me a lot I didn’t know about how cadavers are used to find the cause of plane crashes and to improve survival chances for soldiers. It is scary that airlines don’t install safety features that the cadavers have helped identify in order to save money. The most interesting part of this book to me was the part about where in the body people have thought the soul was located and how amazing it is that a person who is dead can still have a living heart and other organs that can save another person’s life.

By the end of this part of the book I think I am no longer that bothered about cadavers being treated like objects for a good reason (the improvement of living people’s lives). I am not thinking that this body could be my grandfather and even if it was, it would be a great thing if he could make life better for someone else. The more you read this book the more at ease you are with dead bodies and the idea of all the good they can do. That seems to be the point of this book.