Stiff

I read this book Stiff, by Mary Roach about uses of cadavers. it was some pretty gruesome stuff.
In the first chapter of the section, Mary Roach talks about of the history of head transplantations. Research in this field started with doctors and scientists trying to take heads of decapitated prisoners who had been through the guitine and reattach them to something that would supply oxygenated blood to see if they could survive. The next thing Mary talks about is about doctors trying to fully transplant the head of one dog onto the neck of another dog. The doctors hoped that they could get both the dogs to survive with a new head. Sometimes it actually worked. In one case, one of the dogs lives for 29 days with the head of another dog. Towards the end of the chapter she covers the benefits of being able to transplant a head from one human to another.
A major benefit is that someone who had severe internal organs to their previous body could have their head transplanted to a healthy body and continue to live. The major drawback, however, is that once the head received a new body, the person would become paraplegic, and have no movement from the neck down. She says that one doctor, Dr. White, was able to transplant the brain of one monkey into the abdominal region of another and keep it alive. The brain had no senses though, and could only think.
The next chapter she writes is called, “Eat Me”. She talks about cannibalism, and the medicinal purposes of cadavers. There were some really weird cures using bodily fluids and stuff. Like saliva for eye infections, and putting tooth tarter on wasp stings. She has an explanation for these bizarre cures though. Someone says that sugar pills, or placebos, will reduce pain 25-40% of the time, and if u take that into consideration u can see how some people could believe they were getting better from the wacky cures. If you believe something works your mind can trick your body into believing it. The worst part of the chapter is when it talks about a man who worked in a crematory and cut the off parts of the deceased people he received and gave them to his brother who worked in a restaurant.