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Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies?
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Kenneth V. Iserson. 709 pages. Tucson, Arizona: Galen Press, Ltd.; 1994. $38.95.
Although modern medical curricula have recently begun to incorporate discussions of dying, almost never do they include discussions of what happens to the body after death has occurred. Indeed, even during a year in which I did about 100 autopsies, I learned almost nothing about the fate of patients once they had left the pathology department.
The author of this book, a surgeon who practices emergency medicine, seems to have intended it for a general audience. However, it is undoubtedly true that, as one dust-jacket blurb says, "This book is too icky for the reading public." On the other hand, this text can help physicians answer many of the questions—spoken as well as tacit—that patients and their families may ask. Topics addressed include body disposal methods and the reasons for them and other postmortem choices that patients and survivors often have to make. Iverson especially promotes tissue and organ donation. He is careful not to criticize overtly or to indulge in macabre humor, even where he might have been tempted to do so. Instead, he presents those criteria on which decisions are best founded. The organization of the book, in the form of answers to some 243 questions, is idiosyncratic and occasionally redundant, but the well-constructed index is unusually detailed.
Throughout the text, just when the pictures of decay conjured up in the mind's eye may have begun to offend one's sensibilities, the author relieves the reader's tension by adding several pages of historical background on the postmortem practice under consideration. Because much of this material is derived from secondary sources, some of it is slightly exaggerated, but its outlines are correct. Most of the illustrations are taken from appropriate historical sources. The book concludes with a chapter of quotations about the dead, a glossary of relevant technical terms, and an appendix that gives definitions of death, the text of the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act, and pertinent U.S. regulations. Extensive references accompany each chapter.
This book is probably unique as a compendium of facts about what happens after death. It may not be suitable for reading from cover to cover, but it will be useful as a reference book to physicians and perhaps to others.
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