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Book: Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Quotes of Book: Stiff: The Curious Lives of
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  1. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    But gross anatomy lab is not just about learning anatomy. It is about confronting death.
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  2. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    Battles in Micronesia were so pitched and bloody that Gilbertese warriors would outfit themselves head to foot with doormat-thick armor fashioned from coconut hulls. On top of the significant humiliation of making one's entrance onto the battlefield looking like an enormous macramé planter was the fact that the armor was so bulky that it required the assistance of several squires to help maneuver you.
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  3. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    Bad enough that some ham-handed fop in a waistcoat and bowtie was up to his wrists in your urinary tract, but on top of that you had an audience-
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  4. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    An entirely truthful rendering of the events would employ words such as "wheedle," "plead," and "attempted bribe." "Does publications know you're here? If you're not cleared through the publications office, you'll have to leave." She strides into her office and dials the phone, staring at me while she talks, like security guards in bad action movies just before Steven Seagal clubs them on the head from behind. One of the seminar organizers joins me. "Is Yvonne giving you a hard time?" Yvonne! My nemesis is none other than the cadaver beheader.
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  5. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    In attempting to cope with the shortage of cadavers legally available for dissection, instructors at British and early American anatomy schools backed themselves into some unsavory corners.
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  6. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    Albert King calculated that vehicle safety improvements that have come about as a result of cadaver research have saved an estimated 8,500 lives each year since 1987. For every cadaver that rode the crash sleds to test three-point seat belts, 61 lives per year have been saved. For every cadaver that took an air bag in the face, 147 people per year survive otherwise fatal head-ons. For every corpse whose head has hammered a windshield, 68 lives per year are saved.
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  7. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    changes in the teaching of anatomy have nothing to do with cadaver shortages or public opinion about dissection; they have everything to do with time. Despite the immeasurable advances made in medicine over the past century, the material must be covered in the same number of years. Suffice it to say there's a lot less time for dissection than there was in Astley Cooper's day.
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  8. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    Though I found this information surprising, this being the Father of Medicine we are talking about, I did not question it. You do not question an author who appears on the title page as "T.V.N. Persaud, M.D., Ph.D., D.Sc., F.R.C. Path. {Lond.}, F.F. Path. {R.C.P.I.}, F.A.C.O.G." Who knows, perhaps history erred in bestowing upon Hippocrates the title Father of Medicine.
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  9. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    remember one of my teammates was just hacking him apart, digging something out," one girl told me, "and I realized I was patting his arm, going, 'It's okay, it's okay.'" I asked a student named Matthew whether he would miss his cadaver when the course ended, and he replied that it was actually sad when "just part of him left." {Halfway through the course, the legs are removed and incinerated to reduce the students' exposure to the chemical preservatives.}
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  10. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    The mortician cleared his throat and looked toward the coffin. I suppose we should have recognized it, as we'd picked it out and paid for it the day before, but we didn't. Finally the man walked over and gestured at it, bowing slightly, in the manner of a maître d' showing diners to their table. There, just beyond his open palm, was our mother's face. I wasn't expecting it. We hadn't requested a viewing, and the memorial service was closed-coffin. We got it anyway. They'd shampooed and waved her hair and made up her face. They'd done a great job, but I felt taken, as if we'd asked for the basic carwash and they'd gone ahead and detailed her. Hey,
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  11. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    The Spanish for 'vacuum' is aspiradora.
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  12. Mary Roach _ Stiff: The Curious Lives of

    The shot is an extreme close-up, making it impossible to tell, without already knowing, what kind of flesh it is. It could be Julia Child skinning poultry before a studio audience. The seminar
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