Body of work

Do you ever find yourself in need of an interesting conversation, but there is really no one around available to talk?  I was feeling like that.  Sometime I pick up odd books I find in the 'left on board and unclaimed' shelf at my work.  A few weeks ago I picked up a book called 'Body of Work' by Christine Montross.  It's a book the writer wrote about her experiences and thoughts as she was going through medical school, more specifically about her thoughts on the relationship with the living and the dead as she studied the human body with the 'help' of her cadaver.
At first it made me feel sick inside, reading about her nervousness leading up to meeting her cadaver.  I am only on Chapter 4 out of 12.
Here a sneak peak for you:

"The history of human dissection is a long and tortured one.  I cannot help but wonder what it must have been like for the first scientists and artists who dared to think of looking beneath a body's skin.  How did they go about their first forays into the dead?  I want to know what it was like for these audacious explorers, who were propelled by the same promise of wonder I feel yet who ventured into territory not only forbidden but largely unknown.  I want to understand in a deeper way the intensity of the taboo of dissection and the visceral aversion we feel even today to the violation of the human form."  (Chapter 4)