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Looking to try something different for work, Michelle Williams applies for an open position as a mortuary technician in a hospital in her town in England. And she gets it, even though she knows nothing about the job and has no experience. No worries: they’ll teach her everything she needs to know.
The two men who have been working there for years do indeed introduce her to all the day-to-day responsibilities in the mortuary, a section of the hospital that is mostly hidden from view. Aside from paperwork and procedures for receiving and releasing bodies, one big part of the job is to eviscerate (take the organs out of) the bodies in preparation for postmortem examinations performed by pathologists. After observing a number of times, Williams is given the opportunity to start doing the eviscerations herself.
The book shares her experiences in the first year of her new job, and it’s all fascinating. I have always found anatomy and all the quirks of the human body intriguing, and this book certainly delivers plenty of material. Not only does it include stories about typical and unusual findings from postmortems (the causes of death, in particular), but it shares some pretty crazy tales about how some unlucky people ended up in the mortuary. (One man’s guide dog took him onto train tracks and left him there; another suffered an unfortunate encounter with farming equipment; yet another was so devoted to fitness that he kept up his workouts while crossing the road.)
Williams accustoms herself to seeing and working with dead bodies and chatting with her coworkers through it all. At the same time, she comes to appreciate just how valuable a job she and her coworkers are doing. Our society today is generally happy to leave the handling of death and bodies to a select few tradespeople who quietly go about vital business and keep the details to themselves.
Down Among the Dead Men is compelling reading, with some parts being a bit irreverently funny and others thoughtful and respectful to the people who have passed and to their grieving families. If you’re at all interested in the topic, I highly recommend it.
And if you’re looking for some similar books, check out Mary Roach’s Stiff and Caitlin Doughty’s Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.
Rated: Moderate. Profanity includes 1 use of strong language, around 5 instances of moderate profanity, a dozen uses of mild language, almost 30 instances of British (bl-) profanity, and not quite 20 instances of the name of Deity in vain. There are a number of references to some unpleasant and gory deaths, almost all accidental. And the nature of the book is of detailing how mortuary technicians and physicians investigate causes of death by removing all the organs, etc. So if you’re squeamish, this probably isn’t the book for you.
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