The Human Anatomy

:

Doctors are driven by a passion to save lives but their earliest training ground is a roomful of death. It's the human anatomy lab where cadavers are the constant companions of these students of medicine.

Into this hidden realm comes a 28-year-old poet who yearns to be a doctor. Her story melds science with emotion, wrestles with the ethics of medicine and recounts the long history of how doctors have turned to the dead to unlock the secrets of life.

This hour On Point: the making of a doctor one cadaver at a time.

Guests:

Dr. Christine Montross, author of the new book, "Body of Work: Meditations on Mortality from the Human Anatomy Lab."