Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies?

Death to Dust: What Happens to Dead Bodies? 'What Subject Bugs People More Than Sex?' asked an Americannewspaper advertisement placed by the National Funeral DirectorsAssociation a few years ago. The answer, a give-away knowing thesponsors, is DEATH. Answers galore to almost anything you wanted to knowabout death, but were too timorous or grossed-out to ask, can be foundin an extraordinary compendium by KENNETH V. ISERSON MD entitled Deathto dust: what happens to dead bodies? (xx+709 pages, 32 figures, 30tables. 1994. Tucson (AZ): Galen Press; ISBN ISBNabbr.International Standard Book NumberISBNInternational Standard Book NumberISBNn abbr (= International Standard Book Number) → ISBN m1-883620-07-4 hardback$38.95.). Some 240 leading questions are answered with phenomenalknowledge, interspersed with awful gallows humour, followed by ananthology of largely tasteless death poetry, a glossary and 10appendices. Questions range from the eminently practical (How long doesit take an exposed body to turn to dust?) to the pretentious (Who gets aparade?), the paranoid (Are these really my ashes?), the marginal (Arebodies buried at sea eaten by fish? [apparently yes]), the futuristic(What will happen to bodies adrift in space?) and the palpably loopy(Could I just have my brain frozen?), to mention but a handful of theinnumerable things that people apparently want to know. Archaeologistsof death who wondered where all the stiffs have really gone will findinformation on every conceivable form of decomposition, whilst theincorrigibly in��cor��ri��gi��ble?adj.1. Incapable of being corrected or reformed: an incorrigible criminal.2. Firmly rooted; ineradicable: incorrigible faults.3. vainglorious or terminally self-conscious in the communitywill turn straight to the section on 'Will I be an archaeologicalfind?'. My nervous giggle started after a few pages, and hadreached certifiable cer��ti��fi��a��bleadj.1. That can or must be certified. Used of infectious, industrial, and other diseases that are required by law to be reported to health authorities.2. levels by the end. But this is a unique andremarkable book; the insights are endless, and the experience not easilyforgotten -- nor indeed the statistics: bones from some 33,000individuals are kept in the Smithsonian's Museum of NaturalHistory; roughly 2 square miles of the United States are used for burialannually. In short, a must for all archaeologists of death.Also available for $3 extra is the Galen Press After-Death Planner,providing 'a convenient discussion format through which individualscan broach broach(broch) a fine barbed instrument for dressing a tooth canal or extracting the pulp. broachn.A dental instrument for removing the pulp of a tooth or exploring its canal. an often-difficult subject with their loved ones'.EVELYN WAUGH, author of The Loved One, would turn in his grave -- amovement which, in Victorian times, might have triggered a small bell onthe surface, intended to alert passers-by to a premature burial.The more decorous dec��o��rous?adj.Characterized by or exhibiting decorum; proper: decorous behavior.[From Latin dec aspects of the Western way of death are the subjectof JAMES STEPHENS CURL'S A celebration of death: an introduction tosome of the buildings, monuments, and settings of funerary architecturein the Western European tradition (first published 1980). xxiv+408pages, 11 figures, 349 plates. 1993. London: Batsford; ISBN0-7134-7336-3 paperback [pounds]25, now out in a revised paperbackedition.