The Making of Mr. Gray's Anatomy: Bodies, Books, Fortune, Fame - Hardcover

Richardson, Ruth

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199552991 ISBN 13: 9780199552993

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2008

Synopsis

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.

About this title

About the Author

Ruth Richardson is Senior Visiting Research Fellow in History at the University of Hertfordshire at Hatfield; Affiliated Scholar in the History of Science at the University of Cambridge; and Society of Apothecaries Examiner and Lecturer in the History of Medicine.

Reviews

In this, the 150th anniversary of the original publication of Gray's Anatomy, Richardson, a scholar of the history of science, relates how this classic came into being. Richardson does a creditable job of explaining how two young doctors, Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter, teamed together to create an anatomy manual better than any available for students in surgery. Their version had better and larger drawings (in fact, their size, which contributed to the book's success, was an accident: the illustrations were meant to be 25% smaller), simpler text and a very successful integration of surgical techniques with anatomical features. Richardson also impressively reviews the technicalities of scientific publication in the mid-19th century. Far less successful is the analysis of the two men behind Gray's Anatomy. With little pertinent material extant, Richardson is left to surmise with a plethora of perhaps and probably. Conversations between the two authors, between Gray and his publisher, and between the publisher and the printer are simply manufactured. Nonetheless, Richardson uses Gray's Anatomy as a springboard to present an interesting slice of scientific history. Illus. (Jan.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

*Starred Review* In August 1858 the publisher Parker and Son issued the most famous teaching text of the modern era, Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical, by Henry Gray, lecturer on the subject at St. George’s Hospital Medical School, London, with drawings by fellow anatomy teacher H. V. Carter, by then in Bombay assuming a professorship of anatomy. The product of three years’ work, it almost miscarried at the last instant. Richardson recounts the book’s story in chapters on author, illustrator, publisher, conception (either by Gray or Parker fils, no one now knows), preparation (i.e., through new dissections), creation (involving printers, engravers, binders, etc.), publication, and immediate reception. Time and again, she admits that precisely what happened and who was responsible are unknown and may remain so. But then she presents the evidence and reasoning to forge ahead, anyway, without worrying—indeed, welcoming—that future discoveries may prove her wrong. She plunges us into Victorian book manufacturing, including financing; corpse procurement under the first British regulation of it; the superiority of Gray’s to previous anatomy tutors; the calculating egoism of Gray and the decency and human vulnerability of Carter. This just isn’t the dry, academic tome you might expect. Though a month late for the sesquicentennial it celebrates, it’s a book about a book that is a perfect triumph of the form. --Ray Olson

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0199552991
• ISBN 13: 9780199552993
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336