Author(s): Carla Valentine

General

A day in the life of Carla Valentine - curator, pathology technician and 'death professional' - is not your average day. Her working life has been spent with the dead, and in Past Mortems she reveals what really happens behind the doors of our houses of the dead, or, as they're more commonly known - our mortuaries. Carla's gap year was spent, not in Peru, but as an embalmers assistant, when her career began. She then trained and subsequently worked as a mortuary technician - or Anatomical Pathology Technologist - for eight years - though these days, Carla is Technical Curator at Barts Pathology Museum, with over five thousand specimens in her care, from teeth to toes. Fantastically written with Carla's signature warmth and humour, Past Mortems tells the stories of her years in the mortuary, how surprised people would be when the door was opened by a 5 ft 3 blonde, rather than Lurch; that pathologists prefer Volvos and why you should call the coroner when you find buried treasure. But, of course, Carla also explores our how we examine the dead - starting with the Y-incision and moving through every part of anatomy - she investigates the body alongside our present and historical attitudes towards death, shedding light on what the living can learn from dead - and the toll it can take on those living souls who work with them.