Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab

by Christine Montross (Penguin 2007)

This book has been on my to-read list for years, possibly since it was published, but I could never find it. Finally, I bought a used copy. It was worth the wait. Christine Montross was a resident in psychiatry when the book came out; she based it on the journal that she kept during her first semester in medical school, when medical students study human anatomy by dissecting a human cadaver which has been donated for the purpose.

Montross describes the dissection and the feelings engendered by it; she adds a dose of history when she travels to Padua to visit the theater when the father of modern anatomy, Andreas Vesalius, essentially began the practice of cadaver dissection for medical students; she explains that without donated cadavers, doctors and students used the bodies of executed criminals or bought cadavers which had been dug up at night, in secret–and sometimes actually did the grave-robbing themselves. But she remains convinced that no other method can replace actual dissection, saying that the woman whose body she essentially destroyed during that semester in anatomy lab gave her a precious gift: “. . . She neither knew me nor knew anything about me, and yet she bequeathed to me this offering, unthinkable for centuries, that has formed the foundations of my ability to heal. My hours with her neither cured her nor eased her suffering. Bit by bit, I cut apart and dismantled her, a beautiful old woman who came to me whole. The lessons her body taught me are of critical importance to my knowledge of medicine, but her selfless gesture of donation will be my lasting example of how much it is possible to give to a total stranger in the hopes of healing.”

The last part of the cadaver to be dissected is the head and brain. Despite their progress in with the emotional component of cutting up the body of a stranger, Montross and her classmates find it extraordinarily difficult to dissect their cadavers’ faces and heads. Montross writes, “The brain is the true embodiment of my own conflicted response to anatomy. Somewhere deep within its crenellations, here lies wonder, and here lies the question of whether we have a right to pursue wonder in seemingly inhuman ways. Here is the knowledge gained by dissection, which drives our actions forward, and here lies the toll the process takes on each of us, in stress or dreams or dissonance. Here in the brain is the newly transformed identity of the doctor-to-be, with a beginner’s knowledge of disease and healing, with a stomach more steeled to trauma and to death. But somewhere, too, there must be the echo of the person who existed before cutting a human body, before feeling the cool stiffness of a pulseless heart.” Montross’ prose is exquisite; I was not surprised to learn that she is a published poet as well as a doctor.

I don’t know why it was so hard to find this book, because I think every doctor in training should read it (probably before they take anatomy lab).

A Christmas Carol

by Charles Dickens (edited by Jane Gordon; published by American Book Company in 1904)

Every year on Christmas Eve, my family and I watch the 1984 movie of A Christmas Carol with George C. Scott–it’s our favorite of many versions. This year, after watching the movie, I decided to reread the original novella, which I have in the collection called Christmas Stories (from “Eclectic School Readings”). The book originally belonged to my great-aunt, who was a teacher. I suppose she may have read some of the stories aloud to her classes. Anyway, I was a bit disappointed to realize that the story was edited. (Here is one of several unedited versions I found on Google Books; I should read that!)

Anyway, I read the edited version, since that is what I have. It omits some scenes  (like Scrooge’s visit to the pawn-broker’s shop with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come) which both the film and the original story include. But it’s still a wonderful story, a classic. Everyone should know it, whether by reading the story or watching one of the movies based on it.

Like Miracle on 34th Street, A Christmas Carol manages to be all about Christmas without ever mentioning Jesus, apart from Tiny Tim, who thought “it might be pleasant to [the people in church] to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk and blind men see.”

The Autumn’s Brightness

by Daisy Newman ( Macmillan 1954)

I’ve now read four novels set in the Quaker community of fictitious Kendal, Rhode Island: Indian Summer of the Heart; I Take Thee, Serenity; Diligence in Love, and now The Autumn’s Brightness. It seems I never blogged about Diligence in Love, which I read several months ago. That one was about an insufferably boring New Yorker, Vaughn Hill, who travels to Kendal for a work project and finds peace there, eventually moving there with her husband and teenaged children. Vaughn and her family appear briefly in The Autumn’s Brightness, although Oliver and Loveday (of Indian Summer of the Heart) do not.

Anyway, the protagonist of The Autumn’s Brightness is named Diligence, or Dilly, which confused me for a while, but Newman explains in the book that diligence in love is a Quaker concept referring to what is needed to sustain loving feelings during hard times in a relationship. The novel opens when Dilly, a widow  whose children have left home, travels to new York to visit her brainless, materialistic cousin Elmira and meets a man who makes a deep impression on her. Despite her determination to avoid a romantic entanglement, Dilly finds Mr. Durand Smith impossible to forget, and he seems equally smitten. But could he just be after her money?

A sweet story, which I finished in just one day. But my favorite is still Indian Summer of the Heart!

Goldberg’s Angel: An Adventure in the Antiquities Trade

by Dan Hofstadter (Farrar Straus Giroux 1994)

Goldberg is Peg Goldberg, an American art dealer who bought some illegal Christian mosaics (including the eponymous angel) from a Cypriot church and was subsequently sued by Cyprus and lost the mosaics. Hofstadter is a writer who took an interest in the case and somehow managed to travel enough to interview most of the main characters in the very Byzantine (haha) plot. The book did not really hold my interest (While reading it, I read several other books), and perhaps because of that, I found it difficult to keep all the details and different people straight in my mind. I came away feeling rather depressed by the eagerness of people who plunder works of art in order to make money. My favorite part of the book was the last part, in which Hofstadter recounts a “tall tale or dream” in which he finally catches up with the mysterious Turk Aydin Dikmen, who seems to hold all the answers to the mystery.

Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love

by Dava Sobel (Walker & Co. 1999; ISBN 0-8027-1343-2)

Having enjoyed Dava Sobel’s previous book, Longitude, I opened this biography of Galileo Galilei with high expectations, and it did not disappoint. In addition to the meticulous retelling of Galileo’s life, discoveries, and inventions, Sobel has chosen to shine a light on the special relationship between the great philosopher and his elder daughter Suor Maria Celeste (born Virginia Galilei), who spent most of her short life in the Convent of San Matteo, in the town of Arcetri, outside of Florence. Suor Maria Celeste had a fine intellect and was by all accounts a virtuous and kind young woman who adored her father above all else. Despite his difficulties with the Roman Inquisition, the banning of his books,  his detainment (first in Rome, then in Tuscany and finally in his own house in Arcetri), she never doubted his goodness or rightness about natural phenomena such as the Earth’s motion.

What sets Galileo’s Daughter apart from other biographies of Galileo is the inclusion of many of the letters which Suor Maria Celeste wrote to her father (his replies have been lost), which the author translated herself. In the letters, we read about the many services that she performed for her father (from sewing his lace collars to copying his manuscripts to managing his affairs when he was away), the many requests she made of him (for money and ingredients for preparing foods and medicines, often not for herself but for others–including him), and most of all the great love and respect that she bore him.

When Suor Maria Celeste died of dysentery at the age of only 34, Galileo, who was then 70 years old, was overwhelmed with grief. When he himself died eight years later, his student and companion Vincenzio Viviani, unable to bury Galileo as he wished due to papal decree, secretly buried him together with his beloved daughter. Eventually, both sets of remains were re-interred together in a grand monument in the Church of Santa Croce in Florence.

Some things I did not realize about Galileo:

• He was in poor health for most of his life.
• He lost his sight in his old age.
• He remained a devout Catholic despite all that he suffered at the hands of the Church and despite realizing that the Pope was not infallible.
• Many of his friends never deserted him despite his vilification by Pope Urban VIII and the Roman Inquisition.
• Einstein considered him the father of modern experimental science (pg. 326, Note).