First Cut; A Season in the Human Anatomy Lab

New York, N.Y.: Picador USA, 1997. First Edition [Stated], First Printing [Stated]. Hardcover. Very good/Very good. Sally J. Boon (Jacket photograph). ix, [3], 308 pages. Includes List of Figures and Introduction; Commencing to Cut; Into Intimacies; From Cadaver to Carcuss to Reincorporation; and Acknowledgments. Also includes 29 black and white figures in the text. Albert Howard Carter is a professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He has written extensively on the interface of the humanities and medicine. Howard Carter (Ph.D., Comparative Literature, Iowa) writes about medicine and health from a humanistic perspective. He has been active in literature and medicine for over 20 years. Ever since his own father dedicated his body to medical research, the author has been intrigued by the fates of our bodies. This book is his account of the semester he spent watching first year medical students at Emory University in Atlanta dissect their cadavers. Nervous, uncertain, even fearful, the students begin the course by cutting open the back, and go on to discover details of the body's miraculous design, as well as some causes of its death. They finish with the puzzling key to the body--the brain--but also with a newfound reverence for the dead. With humor, compassion, and wisdom, Howard Carter recounts the semester he spent watching first-year medical students in a human anatomy lab. From the tentative early incisions of the back, the symbolic weight of extracting the heart, and by the end, the curious mappings of the brain, we embark on a path that is at once frightening, awesome, and finally redemptive. Derived from an article in Publishers Weekly: Carter, a professor of literature and humanities at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Fla., always wanted to be a physician but never took the step of applying to medical school. Instead, during a sabbatical, he sat in on a human anatomy course for first-year medical students at Emory University and chronicled what students go through, both emotionally and physically, as they dissect cadavers over the course of the 16-week semester. Coupled with this story is that of Carter's search for closure with his father's death, and his discovery of what became of his body after it was donated to a medical school. The personal narrative, particularly in three essays written in lieu of the exams taken by the students throughout the semester, is overwritten ("What is this voyage within, with all its sensuous glory?") and is less successful than Carter's descriptions of how students come to grips with the cadavers. While this particular anatomy course seems ideal, comprised of thoughtful, creative lectures delivered by devoted professors to adoring and eager students. Carter provides insight into a critical aspect of medical training, and an unusually intimate, even arresting, view of the bodies we have and the bodies we will become.