Stiff...the rest

I did not really get to writing the middle section of the book at all, but I will just include a little bit of it in this part. I finally finished the book Stiff for my AP bio class. All the book reports are written and turned in and I feel soo relieved. The middle section of this book was not as interesting to me or at least memorable. I can mostly remember the end, and that is probably mostly because it was the most recent thing I read from the book.

As I finished the book, it kept me interested all the way though. I thought when I first got this assignment that I would have to read some boring book about really confusing ideas that I would not be able to understand. This book has proved my thinking wrong. I can stay interested and actually understand the concepts and things that cadavers were used for. The very little that I don't understand is explained in a very easy way.

One of the chapters is about how bodies were medical uses at one point in time. Old men would donate their lives and eat nothing but honey. Then once they would die their bodies would be put in a stone coffin and filled with even more honey. The bodies would sit in this honey coffin for about 100 years. They would then be taken out and used as an ointment on injuries. I wonder if it actually even worked because it sounds pretty ridiculous.

The book also talked about what heads and minds go through when they are disconnected from the body. There were scientists that would take heads straight from the old fashioned guillotine to their labs to experiment on. They would flow blood or electrical currents through them to see if they were still able to make movements or thoughts. They also tried to do head or body transplants. Some were able to survive for a little bit of time, but most died from rejection of the new part.

This book overall has been very interesting all the way through. I do not think that there was a chapter that did not capture me into reading it. There were some facts and experiences that kind of got tedious to read even though it was appealing.

Stiff: Section 1

I have started to read this book, Stiff for my ap bio class. We had a list of books to choose from to read for the assignment. There are four different papers we are supposed to write. The first three are splitting the book into thirds to read and the last one is an overall view. This is over the first section of the book that I read.

When I went to Barnes and Noble to pick out a book, I had a couple in mind. I had to ask the ladies there to help me find some of the books and they ended up finding Stiff and Survival of the Fittest. I talked a little bit with some of the ladies there that helped me to see what one would be better to read. One of the ladies told me that Stiff was quite funny and clever. She thought it would be more interesting to read, so that’s the book I went with.

As I first started reading the book Stiff, I did not expect it to be too exciting or funny. When I started to get more into the book, it became more and more interesting. The author did a very nice job of really putting her personality and humor into the reading. When she would describe different work with cadavers it was always her observations of what others did and how they felt about it. She herself would put her own experiences in there too, but it was not all just her own feelings she shared.

Cadavers were used as practice heads for students at school. These students would practice facial reconstruction like face lifts. Cadavers are great study bodies for students to learn from before they start working with people whose lives are in their hands. Back in older times when using cadavers was not really allowed, anatomists would either use the bodies of criminals that were put to death, or they dug up the graves of those that had died. This led to a business of grave robbing. People would dig up graves at night and sell them to anatomists for a good profit.

Another thing cadavers go through is being embalmed. This is also practiced in school, usually for the poorer people who can't afford it. Some scientist would use dead bodies to see how the body decays. They would set out bodies to see exactly what parts of the body go first and what happens to the innards. These help know when a body actually dies. The book is very interesting to learn all the different ways cadavers are used. You would never know how many ways there actually are.