Life After Death: Stiff Version

If anyone can tackle the subject of the myriad things that happen to cadavers with humor and grace, it has to be Mary Roach. Her book Stiff, published back in 2003, is subtitled The Curious Life of Human Cadavers. I only recently discovered Roach’s blend of writing in mid-March when I read Gulp. Based on just that one book, Roach shot up to my top five favorite authors. Since Gulp was her most recent book, I decided to go back to her first book. Stiff does not disappoint. Her humor and daring is exquisitely balanced with the most interesting facts and research you’ve never heard.

I learned about surgeons practicing cosmetic surgery on heads, and how respectfully they (the heads) are treated, and the protectiveness of the chief decapitator. There’s more decapitation if you want to learn about experiments involving head transplants. Early anatomists partnered with body snatchers, and even William Harvey (discoverer of the human blood circulation system) performed dissection on his own father and sister. Some physicians even dug up corpses themselves. Cannibalism, cremation, and composting are more fascinating and complex than I knew. Yes, composting dead bodies is a thing. At least in Sweden. And the argument is environmental. Wouldn’t you prefer an ecological funeral? Or you could donate your body to science – it might help the army test weaponry or car manufacturers test crash damage, among many other uses.

My favorite chapter, though, is titled How to Know if you’re Dead. It turns out there was quite a bit of controversy as to whether the inactivity of the heart or the brain should be used to define when someone is dead. In the U.S., it’s brain death. Amazingly, this legal definition only started in 1967, first in Kansas. And at least in 2016, there was still significant variability in individual institutional policies. I suppose it makes sense that the heart was used as the measure for a long time, since brain activity was more difficult to measure.

That being said, before an effective stethoscope was invented, it was sometimes hard to tell – especially if someone had a very faint pulse. Thus, the fears of being buried alive. I actually learned in a seminar that the last line of Alfred Nobel’s 1895 will (which is famous for endowing the Nobel prizes) reads: “Finally, it is my express wish that following my death my veins shall be opened and when this is done and competent Doctors have confirmed clear signs of death, my remains shall be cremated in a so-called crematorium.”

Besides the heart/brain controversy, Roach also tackles the question of where the soul is located. I learned that while the ancient Egyptians favored the heart, the Babylonians favored the liver. On the other hand, “the Mesopotamians played both sides of the argument, assigning emotion to the liver and intellect to the heart. These guys clearly marched to the beat of a freethinking drummer, for they assigned a further portion of the soul (cunning) to the stomach.” Descartes picked the pineal gland and an Alexandrian anatomist named Strato picked “behind the eyebrows”. Edison apparently thought that there existed “smaller-than-microscope entities that inhabited each and every cell and, upon death, evacuated the premises, floated around awhile, and eventually reassembled to animate a new personality.” Midichlorians, anyone?

The movie 21 Grams takes its title from the premise that the body loses 21 grams of weight upon death – as the soul departs the body. Roach discusses the early experiments of one Dr. Duncan Macdougall who installed a special bed in his office connected to a sensitive weight balance. He was quite the experimenter. After observing a loss of three-quarters of an ounce, the good doctor tried to rule out in scientific fashion other sources – evaporation of moisture, bowel or bladder movement, residual air in the lungs, etc. He then apparently tested these on dogs (it is speculated that he poisoned them) and found no weight change. His conclusion: Dogs have no soul while humans do. The scientific community at present thinks the early experiments were flawed, and that there is no evidence for the “21 grams theory”.

In the same chapter, Roach discusses the curious “phenomenon of heart transplant patients’ claiming to experience memories belonging to their donors”. They’re strange. Very strange. You’ll have to read Roach’s book if anything I’ve said so far sounds interesting. And I’ve only discussed snippets from one out of twelve chapters. Stiff is a breezy read and very engaging. I highly recommend it. Let me close this post with a quote from the author Burkhard Bilger praising the book.

“Mary Roach is the funniest science writer in the country. If that sounds like faint praise – or even an oxymoron – there’s proof to the contrary on almost any page of this book. Stiff tells us where the bodies are, what they’re up to, and the astonishing tales they have to tell. Best of all it manages, somehow, to find humor in cadavers without robbing them of their dignity. Long live the dead.”

Appropriately, I'm looking forward to reading Spook next. Science tackles the afterlife, apparently.