Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers

by Mary Roach

The way I see it, being dead is not terribly far off from being on a cruise ship. Most of your time is spent lying on your back. The brain has shut down. The flesh begins to soften. Nothing much new happens, and nothing is expected of you.

Death. It doesn’t have to be boring.

Being dead is absurd. It’s the silliest situation you’ll find yourself in. Your limbs are floppy and uncooperative. Your mouth hangs open. Being dead is unsightly and stinky and embarrassing, and there’s not a damn thing to be done about it.

For those who must deal with human corpses regularly, it is easier (and, I suppose, more accurate) to think of them as objects, not people.

Cooper was an outspoken defender of human dissection. “He must mangle the living if he has not operated on the dead” was his famous line.

Sir Astley wasn’t the sort of fellow whose ill will you wanted to take with you to your grave. As Sir Astley himself put it, “I can get anyone.”

They quickly learned to objectify cadavers, to think of the dead as structures and tissues, and not a former human being.

Willing one’s body to science began to be seen as another acceptable—and, in this case, altruistic—alternative to burial.