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Analysis Of Stiff By Mary Roach

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Stiff: The Secret Life of Cadavers Stiff, written by Mary Roach, is an informative New York Times Bestseller about the mystery behind bodies donated to science. In the book, Roach covers an extensive array of information about cadavers including the medical uses of them, the use of them in forensic science, and even the history behind them. Throughout her scientific account of the studies she participated in, Roach uses an interesting sense of humor to engage the reader while providing them with information. The book’s main focus is on the scientific uses of cadavers. Roach’s first chapter covers the use of cadaver heads as a means to practice surgical skills. Roach was invited to watch plastic surgeons brush up on their face-lifting skills. She explains that no part of a body donated to science is wasted. This is evident in another, later chapter about the studies around the body during crucifixion. Pierre Barbet used an amputated arm attached to a 100 pound weight to see if a body could be …show more content…

She talks about the usefulness in two different chapters. In the chapter entitled, “Dead Man Driving” Roach explains the use of dead bodies by scientists who test the safety of cars. The cadavers tend to come in handy when looking to see the effects of a crash on a human as they can’t object or feel pain. After subjecting the bodies to intense crashes, researchers analyze the collected data and use it to improve features on new care models to make them safer. In another chapter Roach explains that though the bodies may not have been donated, crash victims can contribute a lot to the knowledge of those who study them. Particularly, large crashes involving more than, say, four people offer the most information to be collected. Crash victims often have an abundance to say about what happened to the vehicle the victims were in. In a way they offer closure, by way of the scientists who study them, to their

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In chapter five of Stiff, Mary Roach delves into the subject of aviation pathology. She explains how aviation pathologists determine what happened during a plane crash and where it originated from by using information gathered from autopsy reports. Body dispersal and the condition of the bodies found both help aviation pathologists determine what caused the plane in question to crash. Aviation pathologists can gather clues about the crash from the bodies recovered from the plane, and the disturbances of the bodies, such as foreign bodies, chemical burns, and broken bones, to determine what happened during the plane crash. Roach also discusses airplane safety, including why some safety features are not supplied on airplanes.

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The last two paragraphs of the passage focus on the use of pathos. Roach says “To be able, as a dead person, to make a gift of this magnitude is phenomenal. Most people don’t manage this sort of thing while they’re alive”. When people read this, it makes them want to be able to take part in something so spectacular. She then goes on to appeal to logic, “It is astounding to me, and achingly sad, that with eighty thousand people on the waiting list for donated hearts and livers and kidneys, with sixteen a day dying there on that list, that more than half of the people in the position H’s family was in will say no, will choose to burn those organs or let them rot”.

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Over these 15 consecutive days our criminal justice class has watched the decomposition of 9 still born piglets, which were laid out in a specific way, with specific wounds. Piglet 10 was put into a box at the beginning of the experiment, and was not revealed until the end of it. Each piglet was in its own condition. Piglet 0 was naked in a box, Piglet 1 was naked on the grass, piglet 2 had 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degree burn all over its body, it too was laying on the grass, piglet 3 was stabbed behind right shoulder, also lying on the grass, piglet 4 had a .380 bullet would on its side, it was laying on the grass, piglet 5 was clothed on the grass, piglet 6 was naked piglet on the black top, piglet 7 was clothed on the black top, piglet 8 was suspended in the air with clothes on, and piglet 9 was suspended in the air naked. At the beginning of the experiment we hypothesized on theories we now know the answer too.

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Doctors are infamous for their unreadable writing; Richard Selzer is not one of those doctors. A talented surgeon, Selzer has garnered critical acclaim for his captivating operating room tales, and rightfully so. A perfect exhibition of this is The Knife, a detailed illustration of a surgery. What may seem like an uninteresting event is made mesmerizing by Selzer’s magnificent account of the human body and the meticulousness that goes into repairing it. The rhetorical appeals, tone, and figurative language that Selzer uses throughout The Knife provide the reader with a vivid description of the sacred process of surgery.

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Yet when looking over the entirety of it, it seems that Roach uses sequential structure to manipulate the readers into possibly donating their bodies to science by giving a clear-cut explanation of how the organ extraction procedure works. This is effective because when trying to persuade a person into doing something that requires a large amount of commitment, people usually want to know exactly what they're getting into-- no ambiguity, no bias, and nothing misleading. The beginning of the excerpt contains graphic imagery, some of which is shown through similes, depicting the removal of cadaver H’s internal organs in order to donate them to living humans who need them. In the section she uses descriptive phrases such as “‘Cherry Sno-Kone’” and the simile “cutting off veins and arteries to be included, like spare sweater buttons” to implant a vivid illustration of the scene in the reader’s mind. By using this imagery, Roach places the reader into the situation she’s recreating in order to make it easier to manipulate or convince them to donate their organs after death.

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She is trying to express that this method is a startling process and is now believed to be secretive such that only the experts should be involved. She refers in the text that people don’t have the abdominal strength to observe the whole process since it is terrifying. The author defines the embalmed body as peaceful after enduring the entire procedure. The tone in the story is informative in the fact that an individual can know how a body is preserved. The author discusses the benefits that the process has on the corpse.

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Mitford is not writing to professional morticians because she is explaining things that she would not have to explain if she were talking to a professional. The author in paragraph twenty explains with great detail how to put “Mr. Jones” into the casket. A professional would already know how to lay a corpse in a casket, but a novice like most people would not know the proper way to do so. “The earlier this is done, the better, for every hour that elapses between death and embalming will add to the problems and complications encountered…”This shows how imperative it is to embalm someone quickly so that the corpse will not rot, and the corpse will be preserved long enough for the funeral.

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Among the many bodies on the wall, some of these bodies are of men wearing “white coats” (Atwood 32), commonly worn by doctors or scientists. Doctors were executed due to their practices

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Chapter 10 is all about mummification and cannibalism. Roach explores cannibalism within many different cultures. A man from Arabia died after only eating honey for a whole month. After he died, his body was saturated in honey for a year. His remains then worked well to heal wounded limbs.

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