A body, bearing racist tattoos, is donated to a medical school for dissection. One shoulder bears a swastika. On the other is written "KKK."
Should the body be presented to the students for anatomical dissection? Should the tattoos be cut off first? Should students even be doing dissections when they could just use computer models of the human body?
Arguing for the continued use of cadavers in medical training, Christine Montross MD'06, a resident in psychiatry, discussed these questions with thoughtful reflection and poetic eloquence before a small crowd in Salomon 101 Monday night.
Her lecture, entitled "Dissection and Doctoring: What The Dead Teach Us About Healing The Living," followed the 2007 publication of her book "Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab."
Montross argued that using cadavers in medical training prepares students for the physical and emotional stress they are likely to face in their careers.
Human dissection is "at times awe-inspiring and at times profoundly upsetting," she said, adding that calmness in the face of emotional distress is a "learned response."
Her own experience with dissection, she said, recorded in full in her book, was at first terrifying, but in the end extremely valuable. She said she holds deep respect for those who donate their bodies to science, though she is unsure of whether she would do so herself.
She went on to examine the evolution of attitudes toward medicine among medical students, many of whom enter the field out of altruism and empathy, she said. Over time, after prolonged lack of sleep, loss of personal time and continued exposure to emotionally traumatic experiences, many students begin to lose this empathy and personal connection to their patients, she said.
She said students are often "depleted," and that the fears of failure and inadequacy force members of the medical field to push themselves too hard. "We should allow the inevitability of death to remind us that we are every bit as human and every bit as fallible as our patients," she said.
The cadavers - "lying on their stainless-steel tables" and donated out of sheer philanthropy - can themselves "serve as symbols of the altruism of young doctors-to-be," she said.
Montross received a master's of fine arts in poetry from the University of Michigan, and her manuscript "Embouchure" was a finalist for the National Poetry Series. She told the crowd of her struggle to balance her medical training with her "stolen treasure" - her writing.
