HW 52 - Third Third of the COTD Book

Precis:

In 1700s and 1800s Paris, there was much discussion over whether the soul was contained in the head, and if a head cut off by a guillotine was aware of what had happened to it. This was due to various accounts of people having seen eyes open and close, or a jaw clench, after the head was cut off. In the 1960s, a neurosurgeon named Robert White began experiments which took the brain out of a human and connected it to the body of another animal. In the past, many cultures have used various parts and wastes of humans (dead and alive), such as saliva, urine, teeth, blood and fat to cure an array of ailments. Some people also eat parts of humans, due to scarcities in food or cultural norms. There are many other ways to care for the dead, including "water reduction" cremation, which uses lye and water pressure as opposed to fire, as well as "human composting". I have decided that unless I am brain dead and people can use my organs, my husband will decide what happens to me. If I have to decide, I want to be given to a medical school to be used for dissections.

Quotes:

"Do you know that it is not at all certain when a head is severed from a body by the guillotine that the feelings, personality and ego are instantaneously abolished...? Don't you know that the seat of the feelings and appreciation is in the brain, that this seat of consciousness can continue to operate even when when the circulation of the blood is cut off from the brain...? Thus, for as long as the brain retains it's vital force the victim is aware of his existence." (200, S.T. Sommering quote)

"Could there come a day when people whose bodies are succumbing to fatal diseases will simply get a new body and add decades to their lives - albeit, to quote White, as a head on a pillow? There could." (215)

"It seems to me that the Chinese, relative to Americans, have a vastly more practical, less emotional outlook when it comes to what people put in their mouths.....The fact that Americans love dogs doesn't make it immoral for the Chinese of Peixian city, who apparently don't love dogs, to wrap dog meat in pita bread and eat it for breakfast, just as the Hindu's reverence for cows doesn't make it wrong for us to make them into belts and meat loaves. We are all products of our upbringing, our culture, our need to conform." (236)

"I will include a biographical note for the students who dissect me, so they can look down at my dilapidated hull and say, 'Hey, check this. I got that woman who wrote a book about cadavers.' And if there's any way I can arrange it, I'll make the thing wink." (292)

Analysis:

When the author started discussing the modern human compost movement (taking place in Sweden), I was reminded of the food unit, and the organic food movement - both seem to be people going back to the "natural order" - the way things were before they got industrialized and complicated. However, human composting isn't what I thought it would be - simply burying the body whole, and letting nature take it's course. The deceased is first put into a chamber of liquid nitrogen, and into one where ultrasound waves or mechanical vibrations will break him into small frozen pieces, which are then freeze-dried and used as compost for a memorial tree or shrub (262). This was slightly disappointing to hear, as it doesn't actually sound that much more "natural" - but I guess it isn't trying to be. Human composting is simply a more environmentally friendly alternative to cremation, where the dead person is used to facilitate the growth of a plant, which will hopefully continue to live for a long time. However, a man named Tim Evans did compost someone in the way I imagined it would happen - he simply composted the body with wood shavings and manure. However, this necessitates using a shovel to break the body down as it decomposes, the thought of which might upset some people.