Donating Your Body to Science

Donating Your Body to Science

I got a book in the mail here at work a couple days ago. It's a Medical Illustrator's Resource book. I always enjoy flipping through and looking at the incredible work these people do.

So I ripped it out of its package, and started flipping the pages. In that very instant, as the pages fluttered before me, an insidious, deeply revolting smell filled my nostrils. I wanted to empty my stomach right there. The odor wafting from the freshly printed book wasn't the usually enjoyable smell of fresh ink, varnish and press blanket wash...no, it was something very difficult to describe: a rich background of high-school frog-disection formaldehyde, spiked with strong notions of rot, decay, old-people-smell, perforated bowel, and other things that were not meant for the living to experience. 'Good lord,' I thought as I tossed the book down, 'this has got to be cadaver smell.' I couldn't be totally sure, seeing's how I haven't had the displeasure of being in the same room as the lucky chumps here who get to film cadaver training seminars. I needed to find out from somebody who would know.

So today, I gingerly picked up the book and walked it over to the video room and found Jody sitting at his computer. I strode up and said, "what do you think about this awesome book?" as I flipped the pages before him. His face transformed from confused curiousity to a look of familiar and unwelcome revulsion. Today was not a day he expected to have to endure the obnoxious odors of preserved corpses. He uttered a few oaths as he backed away, grabbed his can of vanilla deoderizer (a local favorite for masking cadaver stink apparently), and started hosing the book down. It didn't help.

I've got it wrapped in a plastic trash bag, sitting on a shelf across from my desk now. I called up the book publisher and asked them what gives. The lady said I was the second person to call, saying the first person immediately threw the book out, but she wasn't sure what the deal was. I wanted to ask whether they had stuck a box of the books in a morgue or maybe an open body cavity for a few weeks so they could get nice & heady, but I figured I'd save that question for the manager who will be calling me later today. I want a replacement book. Not the greusome retch-inducer I've got now. Yech. I think it's plain that I could never have worked in the forensic sciences. ::barf::

Jeremy