Christine Montross: Body of Work
Selected Excerpts
“Suddenly we are talking about reaching the cadaver’s heart and lungs, and I have barely begun to get used to the idea of the initial cut through a dead body’s skin. Friends of mine who’d finished medical school had alluded to the pace of the course when I asked about acclimation. “You don’t have much time to process,” one friend said. “There’s just too much to get done.” This class would be a baptism by fire.” (pg. 17)
“Dale tells us we must spray our bodies with a wetting solution to keep them from drying out and making dissections stiff and difficult, if not impossible. He is all business. I feel as though I’m in two places at once. I listen intently to Dale, relying on his practical words to ground me in this most preternatural of moments; however, I’m also staring at the cadaver, wondering how I—how any of us—will be able to make the first cut into this woman’s body.” (pg. 21)
“One of the strangest things about dissecting a human body is the difference between a human body and a human being… We can curse the difficulty in finding a tiny artery in the thumb or neck and even laugh at our ineptitudes and mishaps. But the humanity of the body emerges in unexpected moments, and the balance of our voyage of discovery with the voyage of a finished life is sometimes difficult to steady. Dissection, we will learn, will require us to turn off, in a sense, our connection with this humanity.” (pg. 24-25)
Discussion Questions
In the anatomy lab, Montross feels as though she is in “two places at once.” What do you think she means by this? Can you relate to this feeling?
“Dissection requires us to turn off our connection with humanity.” Do you agree? Have you felt this way in anatomy or elsewhere?
What do you think the experience of anatomical dissection, especially so early in medical school, teaches future doctors about medicine, patient care, and self care?
Reflections from #MedHumChat
“There is a clinical part of her "with" Dale, listening to anatomical directions. But the rest of her is "with" this woman, seeing her not only as a dead body, but a former ensouled human. How could she divorce herself enough to do what she must?”—@Ndouthit
“I have the distinct memory of finding a tattoo on our cadaver's leg. We had already been at it for weeks, and had very much depersonalized at that point. We just worked, learning structures. All of a sudden we were staring at a reminder of the human before us.”—@DocLHenry
“At my med school, the cadavers were presented to us as "our first patients". We were told to care for them as they taught us the interconnections of the entire body. It was described as the most intimate first patient relation we would have, and to honor that.”—@BeccaOm15
About this #MedHumChat
Body of Work was paired with “Anastomosis,” a poem by Ashna Asim for a #MedHumChat discussion April 17, 2019 exploring The Experience of Human Dissection in the Anatomy Lab
The pieces for this chat, along with the discussion questions, were selected by Colleen Farrell.
About the Author
Dr. Christine Montross is an American psychiatrist and award-winning writer. She is also an Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University. You can learn more about her here.