The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy |  | Author: Ruth Richardson
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
List Price: $29.95
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Rating:  1 reviews
Sales Rank: 143731
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Pages: 288
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.6
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.1 x 1.2
ISBN: 0199552991
Dewey Decimal Number: 610
EAN: 9780199552993
ASIN: 0199552991
Publication Date: December 15, 2008
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Product Description
When Gray's Anatomy appeared in 1858, contemporaries immediately recognized that it was a departure from anything that had come before. Sales were brisk, and the book rapidly became not just a bestseller, but the standard work. Created by two young men in only two years in the mid-nineteenth century, Gray's Anatomy is the only textbook of human anatomy continuously in print for the last 150 years.
Commemorating this remarkable anniversary, The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy tells the fascinating story of the origin of this groundbreaking book. Providing a wealth of historical context, Dr. Ruth Richardson examines both the mid-Victorian medical world in which Henry Gray and the brilliant illustrator Henry Vandyke Carter operated and the vigorous publishing industry in London at that time. Along the way, Richardson explores the scientific and cultural life of the medical school dissecting room and dead house, as well as the lives of those whose corpses ended up on the slab. The very different personalities and life-stories of Gray and Carter emerge in the telling, as do those of their publishers, and the many other individuals who were involved in the making of the book itself. Indeed, The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy investigates the entire production process--from the book's conception in 1855 to its reception by the medical press in 1858--via typesetters, wood-engravers, steam printers, paper and printing-ink suppliers, paper-folders, stitchers and bookbinders. Here we encounter individuals motivated by money, vanity, altruism, scientific discovery, professional pride, and the quest for faith and fame.
Vividly written and painstakingly researched, The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy illuminates a vibrant human document, one that has guided medical students for a century and a half.
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| Customer Reviews:
The Origin of a Classic Text February 23, 2009
R. Hardy (Columbus, Mississippi USA)
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
There are millions of fans of the television series "Grey's Anatomy" which has been in production at ABC for five years. But _Gray's Anatomy_ has been in production for 150 years. If there are those who didn't know that the television series took its title as a pun from the older work, it's a sure bet that they aren't doctors. Even the medical students whose gross anatomy course didn't use _Gray's Anatomy_ knew it by reputation, and their own anatomy textbooks were heavily influenced by Gray's. In _The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy: Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame_ (Oxford University Press), historian Ruth Richardson has given the story of how the book came to be. Richardson wrote the Historical Introduction to the 150th anniversary edition of the great book, and here brings a focus onto the author, illustrator, publisher, and printer who brought forth the original. It is a surprisingly moving story, with flawed heroes on a visionary quest, and Richardson brings forth rich detail in a gracefully written biography of one of the most influential of scientific works.
At the heart of the story is Gray himself, Henry Grey, an ambitious young physiologist and surgeon. Unfortunately, Gray is largely an unknown. He did not write a diary, and when he died young at age 34, there, were obituaries, but no one wrote a personal memoir about him. His work history, says Richardson, indicates he was "a clever, competent, and very hard-working surgeon, ambitious for professional success." He was able to acquire influential patrons, and he was able to get others to work for him. One of those others was Henry Vandyke Carter, an artist, microscopist, and apothecary-surgeon who, during the time of his collaboration with Gray, went on to qualify as a medical doctor. He was shy, devoutly religious as a non-conformist, but also full of self-doubt that he put into his diary, a document that Richardson uses throughout. He was four years younger than Gray, and consistently deferential toward him. Carter, not Gray, is the more likeable character, for Gray used him, often without proper credit, and she gives evidence that Gray tried to downplay the role of the splendid illustrations Carter provided for their textbook. Gray's treatment of Carter seems particularly unfair to us now, as the illustrations are easily the most immediately appealing part of the book. Carter did all the drawings, and did most of the wood engravings that were used in the press. In her appreciation of Carter's work, Richardson points out that he tended to put the names of anatomical structures upon the structures themselves, a return to an old illustrative tradition from medieval times. Putting the labels directly on the drawings, Richardson points out, meant that there was no flitting of the eye from picture to text, and that visual and verbal memory were thereby mutually supported. She also shows that Carter's lack of an art school education meant that he did not pose his dissected models in "classical" stances as previous texts had done. He also posed them in ways that seem humane, as opposed to the extreme of illustrator John Bell, who had shown the dead cut up with hooks and chains to hold the displayed parts in place.
Throughout this book, there is concern about the human specimens (or victims) used by the anatomists. Richardson is the author of a history of corpse dissection in England, and describes extensively the cadaver domain within St. George's Hospital where Gray and Carter practiced. The horrors of the resurrectionists were over; the resurrectionists were those who dug up corpses to sell to medical students, or like Burke and Hare provided corpses that were very fresh. The 1832 Anatomy Act allowed hospitals and workhouses to send to the anatomy labs any bodies left unclaimed for two days. Richardson has analyzed remaining records of St. George's, and finds that it connived with workhouse managers who deliberately arranged for any family members to miss the 48 hour deadline of claiming bodies. We can know nothing of the anonymous humans who thereby unwillingly made themselves part of Gray's classic volume. Richardson quite rightly shows that although Carter's illustrations are humane in comparison to what had gone before, nowhere do the anatomists reflect on the remains of the previously neglected humans under their knives, and within Gray's textbook, nowhere is "their native status as the defeated, dismembered, unconsidered, naked poor even mentioned". Richardson has obvious admiration for the industriousness and artistry of the authors, which she describes throughout this fascinating look at medical training of the their times, but she also brings to our attention the silent throng that was the very basis for any resultant medical erudition. In a wonderfully optimistic page, Richardson reminds us that the atmosphere in today's cadaver rooms is far different from what it used to be. "It is difficult now to imagine how it may have felt to carry out the ritual pillaging of the dead house, tell untruths to enquirers, and dismember people whom one knew had no wish to be dissected." Nowadays, the cadavers are gifts from people who wanted to be there, just to help increase the world's store of knowledge. Gray and Carter would be astonished.
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