Morbid Fascination

Wouldn't it be fascinating to hold a living heart and feel it pumping in your hands? I've often thought about it and fantasized being a doctor in the OR and doing just that. The human heart can beat on its own for about 1 to 2 minutes after being removed, and when I say beat, I mean it in the most animated way. It's the most lively looking thing in the human body, and when it is severed for an organ donation, it sometimes happens that it is dropped because of it's vigor. In such a case, they just clean it up and put it in the cooler. 3 second rule! Good as new!

I've been reading about things like this in the novel Stiff: The Curious Lives of Cadavers, by Mary Roach (what an unappealing name O.o) which I recommend to anyone who wants to know what happens to your body after your demise, whether you decide to donate it to science, cremate it, donate organs, or let it rot in the ground. It talks about dozens of experiments done with cadavers as well as animal and simulated substitutes, the topics ranging from crash testing to researching decay in body gardens (it's exactly what you think it is). I'm not surprised that people with these jobs don't exactly do it while humming happily to themselves, but I suppose it is satisfying and in certain cases necessary. Except for cutting through that first layer of fat (omg that stuff looks nasty) and withstanding the smell, I don't think I would mind doing autopsies. When you get down to it, we simply look like pieces of meat on the inside. I've seen some on T.V. and also on youtube. I'm surprised that they have that sort of thing on youtube, but I'm not gonna post anything here, I don't want anyone to be too grossed out...aw, what the hell. Don't watch it if you can't take it, and don't say I didn't warn you that it's graphic (dur...it's an autopsy). I found one where the coroner narrates what he's doing, which is nice.



Speaking of dead meat, my mom had a traumatic experience in her childhood where she went to the meat smoking room (where the family would smoke their own meat...er...did I have to explain that..? sorry) to find that some of the meat spoiled and there were hundreds of maggots everywhere, loudly munching on the meat. The novel describes the sound as that of rice krispies in a bowl of milk. I asked my mom if that's what she heard and she confirmed it. She watches shows like C.S.I. and likes them as much as I do, but she can barely stand it when they show maggots (or hacienda, as I like to now call them). What's most disgusting about these insects is that the eggs are laid at all the openings of the body they can get to--the mouth, eyes, genitals, bellybutton--because little hacienda can't bite through skin. And it's not just outside critters eating up the dead, they start to melt (er...decay) from the inside because the bacteria in the body is no longer kept in check by the immune system, which is shut down. The first organs to go are the lungs and everything in the digestive sytstem, since that's where most bacteria lives, but the brain goes early, too. This is because all the bacteria in the mouth eats up the soft palate and works its way up there rather quickly. After three weeks, a dead body is basically reduced to soup on the inside (chicken soup, to be specific).

I'm not yet through reading (right now I'm learning about how versatile feces, spittle, and mummy remains were in the medicine market), but I already wish that I had bought it like I meant to in the first place instead of just checking it out of the library like my mom urged me to. I think it'll be a handy book because it not only talks about the scientific and medical aspects of dead bodies, but it also touches on the history of how they've been used and treated to benefit the living.



Fascinating.