First published 30 years ago, when Dr. Richard Selzer was still a practicing surgeon in New Haven, Connecticut, Mortal Lessons is made up of 19 “pieces” organized under four categories: “The Art of Surgery,” “The Body,” “Essays,” and the autobiographical “Down from Troy.” 

The Exact Location of the Soul
Seeking redemption in the bloody business of surgery, the author recalls various medical experiences that humbled his professional pride.   Asked “why a surgeon would write,” Selzer replies that it is to “search for some meaning in the ritual of surgery.”

The Surgeon as Priest
After inviting the reader to enter a patient’s body (“All at once, the membrane parts . . . and you are in”), the author recounts two medical stories in which spirituality plays a critical role.     
Lessons from the Art
Moving emotionally from despair to acceptance, Selzer tells four stories of surgical loss: a death on the operating table, the drowning of a sick child in wartime Korea, the abrupt  death of a professor due to a perforated ulcer, and a woman’s loss of facial mobility after the removal of a tumor.  

Bone
A ten-page meditation on the structure and the power (as well as the defects and diseases) of human bones—all 208 of them. 

Liver
”The liver, that great maroon snail . . .: No wave of emotion sweeps it.  Neither music nor mathematics gives it pause in its appointed tasks.”  Moving from the “liver worship” of ancient peoples to the effects of cirrhosis, Selzer offers fresh perspectives on the largest of our glands. 

Stone
In this unusual study of the urinary system and the suffering it may induce, Selzer invokes his true-grit theory: “the longer we live the more we tend to harden.”

The Knife
One of the most frequently anthologized pieces in this collection, Selzer’s meditation on the scalpel leads him once again to consider “the priestliness” of his profession.

Skin
Included in this dermatological disquisition is the story of Henry Moss, a black man whose skin one day inexplicably turned white.

The Belly
”The ravenous stomach . . ..  It is the least refined of organs, a fetid, rank and gaseous trough that knows but the pressure of fullness, the cavernous echo of emptiness--a pink, moist, hairless creature whose call is a belch, and who responds to its ingesta with delirious contractions and metallic bleeping. It is, all in all, an uncouth performance.”

The Corpse
One of the longest essays in the book is also the most disturbingly graphic: Selzer provides an unforgettable introduction to the suction trocar.

Bald
A humorous essay on the causes and effects of being “shorn, forlorn. Delilahed.” 

Smoking
A short essay in defense of smoking—“gaseous testimony” that we exist. 

Abortion
Characterized in Selzer’s updated preface as “a literary rendition of the event, not an argument against the procedure,” the author witnesses an abortion for the first time.

The Twelve Spheres
An account of ancient Chinese medical practices, with special attention to the art of acupuncture.

Down from Troy
This account of growing up in Troy, New York, the son of country doctor, later served as the basis for Selzer’s autobiography, Down from Troy: A Doctor Comes of Age (1992).

Car Sickness
A short essay on the author’s childhood bouts with “mal de voiture.”

Longfellow, Virgil, and Me
A school house tale of youthful infatuation—with a vulnerable classmate and a passionate translation of Vergil. 

Jacob Street
At times echoing James Joyce’s classic story “Araby,” Selzer pays a sentimental visit to Armine der Arakelian in “the casbah” of his childhood memories.  

Birdwatching
Though appalled by the meanness of his fellow birdwatchers, the author confesses that he observes birds for sinister reasons—and to “feel a little madness of my own.”