My estival reading has covered the ground from cadavers to turn of the century Viennese socialites; it has been a very diverse diversion.
"In Arabia there are men 70 to 80 years old who are willing to give their bodies to save others. The subject does not eat food, he only baths and partakes of honey. After a month he only excretes honey (the urine and feces are entirley honey) and death follows. His fellow men place him in a stone coffin full of honey in which he macerates. The date is put upon the coffin giving the year and month. After a hundred years the seals are removed. A confection is formed which is used for the treatment of broken bones and wounded limbs. A small amount taken internaly will immediately cure all complaints. (Chinese Materia Medica, 1597 compilation from Li Shih-Chen)
from
Mary Roach -Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Stiff, hands down, is the most entertaining book I've read this summer. It covers the usual cadaver info: like car crash tests down with cadavers, or the University of Tennessee lab of decomposing cadavers (for forensic studies). But it also goes into the morbid history of head transplants- which includes sories of two headed dogs and the attempts to revitalize guillotine victims' heads.
I was laughing out loud at Roach's antics in uncovering a newspaper story (rumor). She travels to China to track down a crematorium, where, supposedly a worker there cut off the buttocks of dead people and sold the cheeks to a local restaurant. The next to last chapter is the strangest, it presents the newest ways to dispose of your dead body. You can either compost or disintergrate your tissues. I won't give it away in case you want to read it for yourself. Roach writes in a witty, casual way which allows all these strange stories to be very easily digestible.
A Few Reviews-
http://trashotron.com/agony/reviews/2003/roach-stiff.htm
http://blogcritics.org/archives/2004/05/24/231726.php
