Customer Reviews

The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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

I just finished reading The Anatomist by Bill Hayes and as an anatomist who teaches medical school, I found it interesting on a number of levels. Mr. Hayes' descriptions of the anatomy labs of today were pretty accurate. I must agree with another reviewer that the book IS NOT about Henry Gray since not that much is known about Henry Gray. It is more about Henry Carter, the illustrator of Gray's Anatomy, and a great anatomist and physician in his own right. Additionally, the book is, as the other reviewer said, more about Bill Hayes' experiences in the anatomy lab than it is about the history of my profession, one which has a long and fascinating history. I, however, don't fault Mr. Hayes except for a glaring anatomical error on page 220 where he whispers to himself that the three muscles that attach to the pes anserinus are the "Sartorius, gracilis and biceps femoris". The biceps femoris attaches to the head of the fibula on the lateral aspect of the leg. Hopefully, the mnemonic he quotes "Say grace before food" is not being passed along at UCSF as the way to remember the three muscles that attach to the pes anserinus. The third muscle, by the way, is the semitendinosus.

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.

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.

The Anatomist is another winner from Bill Hayes. The book tells the story of Gray's Anatomy, the definitive anatomy text that was first published 150 years ago this year. Most likely your doctor has come into contact with the text somewhere in their training or career. Until The Anatomist, very little has been written about the two others of Gray's Anatomy. Yes, there are two authors. While the book is named after Henry Gray who wrote the text, there was another author/artist who drew the meticulous, detailed drawings of the human body. As a matter of fact, it could be argued that the book is most well known for the drawings by Henry Vandyke Carter who has mostly been uncredited since the early editions. The story of the book is fascinating. After copious research very little is known about Henry Gray. I won't give away why. But in his research on Gray, Hayes stumbled upon Carter's journals which are filled with details about his life during those times. The journals provide a fascinating glimpse into the troubled life of Carter who is tortured by the religious doctrines of the time and his burgeoning sexuality. Of course scandal ensues for Carter and I also want give that away. The book is also a fascinating examination of the practice of journaling. Hayes himself is journal keeper and finds many similarities in the practice of keeping a journal with Carter who lived 150 years earlier. If you keep a journal, you must read this book. Hayes also includes side by side with the story of Gray and Carter his own experiences in the gross anatomy lab learning about the human body through dissection. Hayes is a beautiful writer. His choice of words and his descriptions of the human body are eloquent and strangely beautiful even when he is describing something that most would want to turn their gaze from. His sentences flow with grace and he seamlessly mixes all of the different elements of the story with his own memoir. Like his other two books, Hayes has a unique gift of combining traditional memoir with science. I can't recommend this book more highly.

Imagine that you're a writer, and you notice that some historically significant person is totally lacking in the biography department. You decide that you're going to take up the slack and write the biography that this historical fellow deserves. Then you find out why nobody's ever written a biography about the guy: There isn't enough out there to create anything more lavish or illuminating than a resume. You'd probably heave a sigh of resignation and move on to greener pastures.

Not so with Bill Hayes. When he set out to write a biography of Henry Gray, the "Gray" of "Gray's Anatomy", he discovered a dismal paucity of records. But, undaunted, he just shifted his focus a bit. Instead of writing about Gray, he wrote about his search for Gray, and his discovery of another fascinating man whose name had fallen by the wayside: Henry Carter, the illustrator of Gray's classic tome.

Carter, it turns out, was an avid diarist and letter writer, and it is through his eyes and pen that Hayes came to know what little could be learned about his colleague. Hayes throws himself not only into these documents, but into the cadavers of an anatomy lab as he strives to understand, as fully as he can, the men who produced a remarkable book, still in print over 150 years later.

In doing so, Hayes produced a remarkable book that follows the journeys of three anatomists: the famous author, the forgotten illustrator, and the intrepid researcher who brings all three alive on his pages.

With THE ANATOMIST Bill Hayes set out to write a biography of Henry Gray, the author of GRAY'S ANATOMY. But information on Gray was hard to come by, and what Hayes ended up writing is an interesting blend of biography (of Gray and also of Henry Carter, the illustrator of the text), memoir, the history of Victorian medicine and an introduction to the subject of anatomy itself.

Henry Gray was a medical prodigy when, in his 20s, he set out to write an anatomy book that he hoped would be a useful guide for students, with straightforward language and clear illustrations representing the latest understanding on the inner workings of the human body. For his illustrator he chose Henry Vandyke Carter, an even younger man who he had taught and collaborated with.

Carter, the son of artists, was a brooding and religious medical student whose artistic talent was already recognized by many of the doctors at the hospital --- St. George's in London --- where he studied. Before working on the anatomy book with Gray, he had illustrated another text for him about the human spleen. Carter longed for a career as a working doctor, however, and the detailed and amazing work he did for Gray was simply a chance to work with his mentor and earn a little extra money. While Gray died young, leaving barely a trace of his personal life beyond St. George's, Carter spent years in India, made some significant medical discoveries and had a scandalous romance with a married woman he met there.

Most of Hayes's story is Carter's story. Carter kept diaries and wrote many extant letters that Hayes used to piece together how GRAY'S ANATOMY came to be. Carter is a compelling character; talented, spiritual, lonely and often depressed, he saw himself as the dark shadow to Gray's bright star. In THE ANATOMIST, Hayes brings Carter's tale into a spotlight that he would've both publicly shied away from and privately basked in. By the end, readers still know next to nothing about Henry Gray and very little about the process in which the anatomy book was created, but they do learn a great deal about the interesting Henry Carter and the world of European medicine circa 1850.

While there was little by way of records or archives on Gray, Hayes wanted to throw himself into the subject that made Gray famous. So as he worked on the book, he took a number of anatomy classes at a local university. Along with first-year pharmacy students, aspiring physical therapists and third-year medical students, Hayes learned all about gross anatomy by dissecting cadavers. This yields some of the most interesting moments in the book and some of the most annoying.

Hayes succeeds in tying in the dissections he performs in class with both the history of medicine and anatomy, and the story of Gray and Carter. However, we are to believe that Hayes becomes something of an anatomist himself, often correcting and teaching the students he spends time with in the anatomy labs, even though he starts out the process with zero anatomy background. His ego here often distracts from the otherwise engaging story. THE ANATOMIST was intended to focus on the collaboration of Gray and Carter on GRAY'S ANATOMY, but it often feels like an egocentric bit of meta-nonfiction: a book that explores its own creation.

Still, the story of Gray and Carter, personal and professional, is worth telling, and THE ANATOMIST will send readers to their shelves to dust off copies of GRAY'S ANATOMY for a closer look, or to the bookstore to find the historic and influential tome that inspired Hayes in the first place.

--- Reviewed by Sarah Rachel Egelman

"The Anatomist" is an unusual combination of biography, history, memoir and anatomy. Hayes wonders one day who the Grey of "Grey's Anatomy" was and how he came to write the volume that has been a standard text for over a century. He finds little about Grey- none of his personal papers or effects survives- but he does find that Grey had a partner- the illustrator of the book.

I'd always assumed that Grey had illustrated his book- frankly, I'd never given it a thought. His illustrator turns out to have been another physician, Henry V. Carter. Carter, son of an artist, was trained in drawing before he turned to doctoring. Carter and Grey shared a passion for dissection and anatomy, and were good friends before it ever occurred to Grey to create a new text. A dedicated diarist, Carter has left us a good record of his time with Grey and his anatomy classes, allowing Hayes to fill in a lot of the blanks as to the creation of the text.

In between his discoveries about Carter and Grey, Hayes tells us about the anatomy classes he took. He is allowed to participate in three anatomy classes for medical students and physical therapists in training, including doing dissection. This allows him to get some idea of what Grey and Carter went through to get their educations- although the carefully preserved cadavers of today are a far cry from the putrescent ones that anatomy students had to deal with in Victorian times. Hayes comes away with a new appreciation for the human body and how it all works.

Hayes made no stunning new discoveries, but the path his detective work took him on was interesting. It's not a great book, but it's a good one. I actually found myself more interested in the author's work in the anatomy lab than in the story he'd started out to tell; he is able to give detailed descriptions of the process of dissection without being gross.

I am not a reviewer, so this will be short. What I want to say is in response to a review that said the book suffered from TMI. My sense is that the reviewer utterly missed the boat when he lost the connection between Carter's devastating struggles in finding and valuing his true self amidst the religious dogma of his day, and Hayes' own struggles with coming out. That these were resolved relatively early in a long-term passionate, loving relationship with his partner, Steve, is one of the most beautiful parts of the book. It is late in the story that the reader comes to know this book as a meditation on life and death, which helps Hayes make meaning (if such a thing is possible) of his own immense loss. This is a memoir of utmost restraint, told with a poet's attention to detail, by a deeply interested, curious and wise person. Hayes doesn't flinch from the hard facts and faces the vulnerability of knowing we are all going to die and there's nothing we can do to control it.

The Anatomist. Bill Hayes. New York: Ballentine Press, 2008. Pp. 250

For those who do not know, Gray's Anatomy is not the television series, Grey's Anatomy, it is the medical school anatomy textbook after which the series is named. The Anatomist is a nonfiction book about the author and the illustrator of this famous textbook which was written 150 years ago and is it in its 39th edition. Physicians all over the world use it in dissecting cadavers and learning human anatomy. Additional stories that Bill Hayes skillfully weaves into the main story are his own experiences participating in anatomy classes with doctors, physical therapists, and pharmacists, and the story of working with his partner sifting through books, manuals, catalogs, diaries, and letters in libraries and archives in England and India as they uncover the story of the lives of these two men, both named Henry, Henry Gray, M.D. and Henry or H.C. Cartwright, M.D., Illustrator.
Henry Gray is a man driven by ambition, fame, status, and money and is the principle force behind the writing of a concise and inclusive manual of anatomy to be used as a guide to dissection of the human body. He does achieve his goal but meets an early painful demise at the peak of a successful career. H.V. Carter, the illustrator, is the coauthor but was not given credit in name or financially to the degree that Dr. Gray was. He is a complicated, driven, obsessive, self deprecating man with strong Christian beliefs whose motivations regarding the book are to make the world a better place and live a life commensurate with his religious values. He pursues it with little regard for status, fame and fortune. His life is productive but tortured, and his career takes him to India studying and writing about tropical diseases. He has a scandalous marriage in India that leaves his wife and himself leading separate lives, he living in India, she in Europe with an occasional rendezvous when he is able to take a break from his work in India. She dies at an early age. He eventually acquires stature and fortune in the British government Indian Medical Service and remarries. At the age of 50, he presents his research on tropical diseases to peers such as Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and Joseph Lister. I will leave the rest for the reader to discover. It is an interesting tale.
To research the book the author, Bill Hayes, participates in anatomy classes and cadaver dissections with medical students, pharmacists, and physical therapists. Interwoven in the story of the two authors is a tour of the human body and the process of learning anatomy through dissection of human cadavers. It involves teamwork and getting to know the different types of people and their feelings of awe as they visualize, touch and feel the parts and understand the workings of the human body. It is an anatomy education for the lay person as well as some insight into the personalities of the different professionals. The other part of researching the book involved working with his partner who assists with the research by sifting through letters, diaries, notes, medical research papers, anatomy manuals, etc. both in Great Britain and in India. The materials are 150 years old and frequently illegible or very difficult to read. Of interest also are the authors' experiences gaining access to archives and dealing with various archivists. There is a much unexpected ending to the book that I will leave the readers to find.
Personally, as a Physician, I have read Gray's Anatomy and used it in my dissection of a cadaver. That experience made the reading of this book particularly appealing. The book is of educational value to those without a medical background. It also gives insight into the personality types of the different professionals that the author worked with. The three stories of Dr. Gray and Dr. Cartwright, the anatomy classes, and Bill Hayes and his partner's research experiences were cleverly interwoven. The only negative I would say about the book is that the descriptions of Bill Hayes' experiences in anatomy class occasionally became a little long to sustain interest. The stories were fascinating, and I would rate the book as excellent. It was well researched, well written, and very interesting reading. I would recommend it to anyone. It is not a book with the gay theme but has a gay author. It is not written for the gay reader only but is a mainstream book.