Summary

Bryson opens Chapter 9 in a dissecting room with Dr. Ben Ollivere at the University of Nottingham Medical School where Ollivere gives a tour of the body using a corpse. While Bryson feels like he might be sick, Ollivere shows him the aorta and then the organs of the abdomen: the liver, pancreas, kidneys and spleen. Then Ollivere shows Bryson the hand, tugging on an exposed tendon in the cadaver’s forearm. Ollivere believes the wrist is a “thing of beauty” (160). They discuss the miracle of cartilage, which is smoother than glass, and the fact that the wrist is built with a strong fascial sheath, which makes it very hard to kill yourself by slitting your wrists. Colleagues in the dissecting room explain that most bodies are cut into pieces so that medical students can focus on one part...