In Mary Roach's intriguing novel Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, the various ways in which human cadavers have been used throughout the centuries is presented in great and interesting detail. Roach describes how cadavers have been used for anatomical study by students, research into decomposition, scientific experiments surrounding post decapitation, organ donation for the living, training for surgeons and morticians, and crash test dummies.
Roach provides readers with entertaining and often grotesque examples of how these cadavers have been used in order to benefit the living or, in some cases, satisfy the curiosity of the living about the mysteries of death. For example, Roach takes readers on a journey through the history of studying decapitated human heads: from the history of researching the possibility of momentarily surviving decapitation to its modern-day implications for head transplants.
Posthumous organ and tissue donation, teaching tools for aspiring doctors and forensic scientists, and crash test dummies are just a few uses for human cadavers. As posthumous donors, the dead gift the living with life-saving organs, eyes, or tissues for skin grafts. As tools for those in the medical professions, cadavers allow medical students to dissect and examine body systems, practice new surgical procedures without fear of repercussions from the “patient” in question, perform experiments, and test pharmaceuticals. In fact, cadavers have been silently instructing medical students since the time of the ancient Greeks.
A cadaver might also be harvested for tissue, muscle, and bone samples to use in slides. For those working in the forensic field, cadavers can provide important information about rates of decomposition as they respond to a variety of different factors: environment, climate, and bug and insect infestation, for example. Finally, as Mary Roach notes in her book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, the dead may also be employed as crash test dummies by scientists in the automotive industry who desire to study the effect that various types of automobile accidents exert upon an actual human body and to test new safety products.
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/body-donation-cadavers-anatomy-medical-education/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4582158/
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