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24 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brilliant Anatomist and Surgeon in a Lively Biography, September 21, 2005
This review is from: The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery (Hardcover)
It is hard to understand that the genius John Hunter, one of the star figures of the Enlightenment, should not be one of those scientists whom everyone has heard of. If the name does not ring a bell, it is strongly recommended that you pick up _The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery_ (Broadway Books) by Wendy Moore. Not just a genius in surgical technique and innovator of scientific experiment to guide surgical choices, he was a brilliant anatomist of other species as well, he was an attentive teacher, and he set up a museum that demonstrated the now accepted views of the origins of life and the age of the Earth. He was constantly attentive to animal behavior and physiology and his curiosity never stopped. A mainstay to his friends, he was also willful and irascible, and made enemies easily, one of the reasons he got limited credit during his lifetime for his new ways of thinking. Moore's book is an exhilarating view of a foolhardy, energetic, innovative, and brilliant man.
John Hunter was born in 1728 in Scotland. He left school at thirteen, and left Oxford after just two months. He instead followed his older brother William to London to help in William's anatomy school in Covent Garden. He would dissect thousands of bodies, and was well acquainted with the "resurrection men", the grave robbers who provided fresh, or maybe not so fresh, specimens. Hunter's reliance on observation and experiment put him squarely against the medical establishment, which had insisted on relying on Aristotle, Hippocrates, and Galen, "preferring to bleed, blister, and purge their patients to early graves." He alienated his fellow surgeons by insisting that surgery was always the last step that should be taken, and should be avoided unless absolutely necessary. His innovations in surgery include teaching (from his days as a naval surgeon) that musket balls entering the body were best left where they were, if possible; digging them out did more damage than the bullet itself. He knew the value of using a placebo when testing a medicine's powers. He made the first experimentation (on dogs) to show what the lymphatic system did. Not only was he not above dealing with the resurrection men, but he tricked the friends of Charles Byrne ("The Irish Giant") into burying a huge casket of rocks, while the giant's body went to the anatomical table. He married well, a woman poet who kept salons; they lived in different worlds, and he designed a house that would accommodate society at the front and resurrection men at the back. (Robert Louis Stevenson is said to have based Jekyll and Hyde on the idea of this structure.) He was always eager to get to his research rooms instead of socializing, but an observer said of the course-talking Scot that he was not polished or refined, "but from originality of thought and earnestness of mind he was extremely agreeable in conversation." He loved keeping strange animals, and loved dissecting them when they died. He drove a cart pulled by three zebus, curly-horned Asian buffaloes, and alarmed his neighbors by using it as regular transportation. He may have been the inspiration for Doctor Dolittle. Wendy Moore has done a spectacular job of bringing him and his times to us. _The Knife Man_ has many gruesome patches that are hard to take, from descriptions of surgery without anesthesia, to experiments on hapless dogs, to the business of the cadaver trade. Its portrait of an extraordinary thinker, however, is vivid, compelling, and enormous fun.
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Medicine comes of age with Hunter, October 8, 2005
This review is from: The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery (Hardcover)
The Knife Man is an absolutely compelling read and is a superb blend of history, science, and philosophy. John Hunter was kind of like the Richard Feinman of the medical establishment of the 18th century. He pursued his own research, never buckled to peer pressure, and had absolute faith in his beliefs. At the same time, he was methodical, open-minded, and humble enough to realize that man bowed to Nature, not vice versa as many of his contemporaries would have wished.
We have John Hunter to thank for bringing medicine, quite literally, out of the dark ages and into the scientific age. Prior to Hunter's arrival, doctors believed that most ill derived from imbalances in "humors." By bloodletting, drinking your own urine, etc, etc, one could have a hope of regaining health. Frankly, as Hunter quickly learned, this was complete and utter hogwash and he systematically set out to prove that many of that age's theories were plainly wrong.
Hunter succeeded in not only altering the understanding of medicine and anatomy in his time but also in inculcating a true scientific approach in his teaching role that reaches to today. He literally taught over a thousand doctors, including those who would go on to found the University of Pennsylvania's hospital in the capital of the American colony in Philadelphia. These doctors spread around the world in a wave and ultimately brought down the ridiculous knowledge base founded by Galen thousands of years before and replaced it with a rigorous, scientific one.
You don't need to be a doctor to understand this book but it helps to have a little medical knowledge, anyone who has taken biology at high school level will be fine. Hunter lived during an exciting time period too, overlapping with Napoleon's run on the continent, William Pitt the Younger as PM of Great Britain, Benjamin Franklin as plenipotentiary in France, and the independence of the American colonies. Hunter crossed paths with many people who shaped history.
This is one of the best books I've read this year.
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7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A fascinating account of the life of a surgical giant, January 28, 2006
This review is from: The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery (Hardcover)
As a retired surgeon I found this biography of anatomist-surgeon John Hunter fascinating. It has a readable style that both informs and entertains as we are led through the dark medical universe of 18th century London, where the average life expectancy was 35 years due to the abysmal public health conditions of the day and a medical system based on blood-letting and other mythologies, and learn of the achievements of this towering figure in the advance of medicine and surgery who is not well known or recognized beyond establishment circles today.
In our modern world of miraculous medical achievements we too often take for granted the scientific approach initially promulgated by John Hunter. Living in London in the mid-1700s this Scottish-born, brilliant yet eccentric surgeon, who was both an ardent naturalist and an innovator of medical practice, was a voice in the wilderness of his day. His common sense approach has been responsible for our emergence from a world of superstition and quackery into today's era of rational science that has increased longevity and relief from so many debilitating maladies.
A man of intense curiosity and self-confidence, Hunter bucked the medical establishment in demanding that objective criteria be the basis of determining the efficacy of medical intervention. Over several decades of intense study and research on human and animal bodies, made possible by the controversial practice of obtaining "material" for his dissection laboratory of fresh corpses from the grave yards of London, he catalogued the gross and minute anatomic principles of the living body and opened the door to a logical understanding of the normal and the pathological features of health and disease. Along the way his work convinced him that the biblical account of history was wrong, and being unafraid to challenge the popular wisdom of his era he did not hesitate to publish his subversive opinions about evolution that preceded Darwin by more than half a century.
As his reputation grew Hunter attracted hundreds of students and disciples to his laboratory, out of whom came many of the most notable medical leaders of the next generation, both in Europe and in America. One of his favorites was Edward Jenner, the discoverer of vaccination, which ultimately eliminated the scourge of smallpox from the face of the earth. Jenner acknowledged his master when he put forth his basic principles for the practice of medicine. These he summarized thusly: first is the priority to look after the patient; next the importance of a continuous quest for knowledge, that is, to read; third is the value of research, not to merely assume, but to "do the experiment"; and finally the responsibility to teach those that follow.
In his successful effort to convince the world of the efficacy of vaccination against smallpox Jenner followed the Hunterian formula of exposition. It begins with the statement of a thesis, then a review of existing knowledge on the subject (in current parlance, a review of the literature), a presentation of an hypothesis, a description of the experiment with "materials and methods", a disclosure of the results with a discussion, and finally a conclusion. This is the scientific method introduced by John Hunter that is used today that has produced the advances in medicine that have so benefitted mankind.
This book deserves wide circulation. It is not only profoundly informative but also produces repeated literary pleasures with each turn of the page for both the expert and lay person alike. We are indebted to Wendy Moore for this fascinating review of the life and achievements of John Hunter.
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