Bookworm: The bodies that are ‘silent teachers’

EVERY spring, at Dundee University, the chaplain holds a special service to honour the lives of the people who have given their bodies to science.

Those bodies are the “silent teachers” on which the university’s medical and dental students learn their skills in the anatomy lab – and as there are about 50 of them every year, the thanksgiving service at the university chapel is packed, not just with the donors’ relatives but the students themselves.

This year, the university published a book in their honour. In Memoriam (Discovery Press, £9.99) includes an extended poem by Christopher Reid, the poet whose last collection A Scattering, won the 2010 Costa Book of the Year (and who will be at the StAnza Poetry Festival in St Andrews next week), a short story by Alan Warner, a series of illustrations by Calum Colvin based on Durer, and an essay on John Donne.

Yet at the heart of the book are the stories about the donors’ lives put together by Eddie Small, who helps teach the university’s creative writing programme. Even to get permission to approach the relatives, he had to have four levels of prior approval. Although most of the donors donate their bodies to medical science for purely altruistic reasons, Eddie points out, others might consider it because the university pays for funeral service and crematorium costs and spend the money instead on a party for their loved ones. And as he explains: “£3,500 gets you a pretty good party.”

MYSTERY SOLVED

What was the first detective novel? Wilkie Collins’ The Moonstone in 1868? That’s what most people (including me) used to think. The British Library would like to put us right. The real answer is, apparently, The Notting Hill Mystery by Charles Felix (1863) about an insurance investigator out to prove a murder. Wisely, the library has just reprinted it, with illustrations from its original magazine serialisation by George du Maurier.

APPY READERS

While thousands have been buying The Scotsman app, its failure to include these pages has provoked much collective grumbling along the lines of why ignore the best bit of the newspaper? Rest easy, gentle e-readers! The problem has been sorted. Up, app and away!