Stiff | Teen Ink

Stiff

May 15, 2009
By Taylor Freeland BRONZE, Elkview, West Virginia
Taylor Freeland BRONZE, Elkview, West Virginia
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Mary Roach’s book Stiff is a book about a medical examiner who goes all over the world to find bodies. The purpose of the book is to inform the audience. People who are interested in medical science fields would be interested in this book. My thoughts on the book are that it is a very good book.
Stiff by Mary Roach is a book about autopsy labs, cadavers, and cannibalism. This book sounds like a gross book, but Mary Roach makes some of the gross things funny. She uses analogies in funny ways. Medical examiners examine on heads and all of the different body parts. Medical examiners go all over the world to get many different bodies. They have to have permission from a family member to get a body. Back in the 1700’s to get money people would go “grave digging”. Grave digging means that at night time people would go and dig up decomposed bodies in graves and take them to the medical lab. People who would do this would get a lot of money. Normally when a person would do that they would get caught and be thrown in jail. Now, medical examiners will go and ask permission for the body and if their wish was granted the body would be dug up and taken to a medical lab for research.
My thoughts on the book were that it is a good book. A quote from the book is “The size of a human head is about the same weight of a roaster chicken”. That is the one quote I really liked. I also like how when a body dies and is sent to a autopsy lab, it can tell how a plane crashed or how something died.
Stiff was about medical examiners who go to different parts of the world to get different bodies. The books main point is to inform people about the medical field. It was a very good book and I would recommend this book to anyone interested in the science field.


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on Oct. 11 2010 at 6:36 pm
missTaco BRONZE, Kingston, Massachusetts
4 articles 0 photos 53 comments

Favorite Quote:
Enjoy Today, because you could die tomorrow

i'm currently reading the book, and its very interesting. i liked the part about the crash tests, that was cool!