| Between the Living and the Dead |
March 15, 2010
In Sandra L. Bertman's One Breath Apart: Facing Dissection, Bertman, professor of Thanatology and Arts at the National Center for Death Education, Mount Ida College, documents a program she began years ago at University of Massachusetts Medical Center to allow first year med students to explore and express their feelings during what many consider the most difficult class of their entire medical school career, Gross Anatomy and its lab work, the course's required dissection of a cadaver. The book quotes MD and author Abigail Zuger writing of the anatomy lab work, "Every single complicated emotion anyone has ever enunciated about the practice of medicine roars into the open."
A Breath Apart documents the initial introduction of the students to their assigned cadavers, their months of dissection, and the final ritual of a thanksgiving ceremony to which families of the donated cadavers are invited. During the ceremony students offer their gratitude to the cadavers, and in some cases acknowledge a bond of learning and understanding -- and compassion -- that will surely assist the young doctors in their future of helping living patients.
The book is comprised of drawings made by the students, self-portraits of themselves facing their dead partner in anatomy, humorous sketches of fear and duty, and heartfelt renderings of the cadaver itself, as both tool for learning and individual human being. The drawings are accompanied by scribbled thoughts, carefully wrought poems, and unadorned anguish: "Words cannot describe what it is like to pull back a sheet and see a cold, anonymous, vulnerable human being -- no movement, no breathing, no signs of life."
Words alone cannot describe the experience of such a meeting and the subsequent relationship between living and dead of dissection and gained knowledge, but A Breath Apart, with its words, photographs, and drawings, comes very close to presenting the transforming experience of Gross Anatomy. Students of the class become cognizant of their increasing powers of sustaining life balanced always against the finality -- and inevitability -- of death. Students with the empathy to understand that what separates them from their cadavers is just "one breath" are the students who will grow into the kind of doctors able to provide both the combination of heart (kindness) and mind (skills) that patients deserve. A Breath Apart is a great place for new medical students to start, and a fascinating read for anybody.
Per FTC rules, the book reviewed here was a review copy supplied by the publisher.
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