The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy (Hardcover)

by Bill Hayes (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
At 150 years old, Gray's Anatomy still sets the standard in medical textbooks, yet little has been written about its author, Henry Gray. Even less celebrated is Henry Carter, the illustrator who brought Gray's groundbreaking anatomy text to life. Hayes (Sleep Demons: An Insomniac's Memoir) explores the lives of these two men, balancing biographical chapters with his own experience in the anatomy classroom, dissecting cadavers and marveling at each new discovery with prose both lucid and arrestingly beautiful: Like a pomegranate, whose leathery rind belies its jewel box interior, the kidney is spectacular inside. From Carter's diary entries, Hayes recreates an era when medical advances were rapidly changing the way people lived as well as challenging religious dogma, and people turned to science in hopes of reconciling the two. Hayes finds emotional resonance in Carter's longing for a job that would matter, as well as in his internal conflicts as a Protestant Dissenter and his fear of professing his despised beliefs in public. As Hayes relates his own growing wonder and respect for anatomy, one feels the echo of Carter and Gray's devotion as they worked to create what one historian called an affordable, accurate teaching aid. Hayes pays eloquent tribute to two masterpieces: the human body and the book detailing it. (Dec. 26)
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From The New Yorker
Hayes’s history of the illustrated medical text "Gray’s Anatomy" coincides with the hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of its first publication. Fascinated by the fact that little was known about the famous book’s genesis, Hayes combed through nineteenth-century letters and medical-school records, learning that, besides Henry Gray, the brilliant scholar and surgeon who wrote the text, another anatomist was crucial to the book’s popularity: Henry Vandyke Carter, who provided its painstaking drawings. Hayes moves nimbly between the dour streets of Victorian London, where Gray and Carter trained at St. George’s Hospital, and the sunnier classrooms of a West Coast university filled with athletic physical therapists in training, where he enrolls in anatomy classes and discovers that "when done well, dissection is very pleasing aesthetically."
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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (December 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345456890
• ISBN-13: 978-0345456892
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #189,626 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A revealing Insight to the body and the men who put in onto paper, January 19, 2008

By	K. Nicol (London) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Bill Hayes has revealed the story of the Gray's Anatomy creation by two medical practitioners working in England during Queen Victoria's reign, the book was published before the American Civil War and has never gone out print it is used by all levels of medical and health professionals, its longevity a testament to the skill of the Author and Illustrator and the Editorial staff since their deaths.
Bill in trying to understand what Henry Gray did put himself through Anatomical Dissection classes, getting a "feel " for the raw material which Gray and Carter transferred to paper. Bill goes further than my research on Gray by unravelling H. V. Carter's story, from early life in Scarborough to working in India for a lifetime and returing to England with Honours.
The story has been explained using as much original material as extant and eloquently blended with hands on experience, the one point demonstrated about Gray is his tireless industry which almost totally masks the man behind, whereas for Carter's diaries allow a glimpse into the life of a 19th Century Surgeon.

Keith E Nicol,
London January 2008

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good Tale, but Author suffers from TMJ and ... TMI , February 7, 2008

By	Kevin Quinley "GeezerJock" (Fairfax, VA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Author Bill Hayes pursues parallel stories:
* The back story on that medical reference icon, "Gray's Anatomy"
* His own anatomical education in exploring dissection of the human body with classes of pharmacy, physical therapy and medical students

He deftly shifts back and forth between the two narratives. He finds that he cannot do justice to Gray's Anatomy without chronicling the life not only of Henry Gray but also the book's illustrator, H.V. Carter. With the patience of a skilled investigator and historical sleuth, Hayes unearths a fascinating narrative of how Grays Anatomy came into being, a tale befitting the 150th anniversary of the book's publication.

Hayes also touches on some interesting points regarding current medical student education, where hands-on dissection may be reduced if not supplants by CD-ROMS and computer-aided tutorials. Do fledgling doctors get the same benefit from that approach or is The Old Way the best?

This is a good book but is somewhat marred by the distraction of Hayes' insistence that all the readers know he is gay. He inserts references to his "partner" Steve, how he got into body-building as a youth to attract the boys, etc. With a clicking sound in his jaw, Hayes suffers apparently not only from TMJ but TMI - Too Much Information! This undercurrent in the book adds little or nothing to the book's narrative thread. OK, we get it. You're gay. Move on! For the medical laity he insists on flaunting his gaiety.

Despite this quibble, "The Anatomist" is a good book that will especially (though not exclusively) appeal to those interested in medicine, health and medical education.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Anatomy for Everyperson, June 10, 2008

By	By George "the bookman" (western New York) - See all my reviews

The Anatomist is a delightfully told story about Henry Gray and Henry (HV) Carter, the author and the illustrator, of the landmark and still in use monumental tome, Gray's "Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical".

I was first introduced to "Gray's Anatomy" while taking Human Anatomy in College on my way to degrees in the psychological sciences. That was many years ago. Years later, my interest in anatomy was again piqued while studying the life and works of Leonardo Da Vinci whom many consider the father of medical illustration.

So it was that when I came upon a copy of "The Anatomist" I grabbed it, sight unseen as it were.

It proved a good read, interesting, full of the history of the study of human anatomy, and as the title purports, Gray's Anatomy in particular. It is largely seen through the eyes of H.V. Carter the illustrator. The historical tract for Carter is extensive. That for Gray himself has been lost.

Hayes takes one not only through the history of anatomy, but manages with some skill to take the reader right into the dissection room where the wonders of the unveiled human body are revealed. Tastefully done this short work is well work reading.