The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern Surgery [Paperback]

Wendy Moore (Author)

Book Description

Release date: September 12, 2006

In an era when bloodletting was considered a cure for everything from colds to smallpox, surgeon John Hunter was a medical innovator, an eccentric, and the person to whom anyone who has ever had surgery probably owes his or her life. In this sensational and macabre story, we meet the surgeon who counted not only luminaries Benjamin Franklin, Lord Byron, Adam Smith, and Thomas Gainsborough among his patients but also “resurrection men” among his close acquaintances. A captivating portrait of his ruthless devotion to uncovering the secrets of the human body, and the extraordinary lengths to which he went to do so—including body snatching, performing pioneering medical experiments, and infecting himself with venereal disease—this rich historical narrative at last acknowledges this fascinating man and the debt we owe him today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Praise for the Knife Man:

“The surgeon John Hunter (1728–93) is not a well-known name outside specialist circles, although that scandalous situation should be corrected by Wendy Moore’s marvelous biography.” —The Times Higher

“Definitely not for the squeamish, Moore’s visceral portrait of this complex and brilliant man offers a wonderful insight into sickness, suffering, and surgery in the 18th century.” —The Guardian (UK)

“Moore’s feel for pace and narrative is impeccable. Her book contains just the right amount of background scenery to bring Hunter alive without swamping him.… She is, at last, the biographer Hunter deserves.” —The Independent

About the Author

Wendy Moore is a writer and journalist, specializing in health and medical topics. She has a diploma in the History of Medicine from the Society of Apothecaries. The Knife Man is her first book.


From the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 352 pages
• Publisher: Broadway Books (September 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0767916530
• ISBN-13: 978-0767916530
• Product Dimensions: 5.3 x 0.8 x 8.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (30 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #161,713 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars great biography concerning the emergence of surgery February 15, 2007

By K. L Sadler VINE™ VOICE

We take so much of our medical care for granted these days, and forget that we have only actually had such choices for lives without pain or crippling illnesses within the last 150 years. In other medical history books, most of them deal with the changes in public health, the use of microscopy to find bacteria and later viruses, the slow and serendipitous findings of antibiotics. This was the first book I've come across that dealt with surgery. It caught my eye because I had read about the use of 'body snatchers', men who either dug up freshly buried bodies or would never bury them in the first place, and sell them to physicians and others who were trying to understand more about the human body. This particular 'horror' was one of the first major bioethical problems, as universities needed to train physicians, but experimenting on human beings was forbidden (and rightfully so), but at the same time, they needed to have someway of understanding how the human body works. Many men before Hunter used animals in experimentation, and even that was frowned upon, but to those like Hunter and Leonardo da Vinci, there was no way to elucidate how to help people when their bodies were so different from those of other animals. Until the late 1700's physicians were still relying on archaic medical practices that had no basis in reality, and much of what was done to patients just made things worse (such as the use of bleeding to purge the body of humours).

Hunter obviously was an immensely intelligent man who used 'resurrection men' to get him the bodies he needed not only to teach himself the best way to operate on things like aneurysms, but also to teach anatomy to his students.... It's amazing the amount of good science he did manage to do under such bad conditions, and it is also amazing that he managed to get away with everything he did (stealing bodies) and never getting lynched by crowds. The stuff he did was necessary to make strides forward in using surgery to relieve pain and prolong lives, and unfortunately, he couldn't have done it without being able to carefully study the human body.

Hunter had a wide body of friends and admirers, as well as enemies. Many of these men like Benjamin Franklin were like him in trying to extend scientific inquiry. What made Hunter different from say the awful scientists in Germany during World War II, is that he never did anything to hurt a living person, and used what knowledge he gained from all this to benefit mankind. The worst thing he probably did was grab the body of the man known to be the tallest of that time period after the man died of alcoholism along with his body problems. This type of collecting was very much the rage back then, when curiosities were displayed in private homes, and later were bequeathed to museums. This is how many museums in England and the U.S. got their start, and there are still medically driven museums like one in Philadelphia (Mutter, I think), that consisted of oddities and mutations in human development. I am sure Hunter probably did some things that would definitely not pass muster nowdays ethically, but because men like him did this stuff, we no longer have to.

The research for this book was outstanding, and so was the writing. This type of book makes me thankful for living in a time period where we can get decent medical care...now if we could just extend it to all, and do so ethically, it would make me happier. One thing about guys like Hunter, is they were not afraid to experiment on themselves, which was not always the smart thing to do, but they could not have foreseen the outcomes of what they did to themselves.

Karen Sadler Read more ›

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars a history of surgery, rationality and thought June 26, 2007

By Mr. Richard K. Weems

Wendy Moore's history of John Hunter, the almost cult figure who was, quite simply, a full advocate of the scientific method and thus not only the grandfather of modern surgical techniques but also an early proponent of evolution, almost a hundred years before Darwin, is a fascinating and enlightening read.

I picked up this book because I have an almost obsessive fixation with the ways of ancient medicine--bloodletting and such. Moore's book fully explores the techniques of the time that John Hunter worked against, not so much out of pure rebelliousness but through a simple desire to provide his patients the best care he could manage and take the time to study the human body and related organisms to find how anatomy worked. The methodology of the 18th century was almost empericial in nature--doctors studied their patients from afar and usually prescribed treatment to barbers, who did all the nasty work. In fact, doctors weren't even expected to know anatomy and sometimes followed texts written by ancient Greeks when it came to medical knowledge. Moore is fair not to paint EVERY practitioner that way (for others, like John Hunter's own brother William seemed to have a vested interest in exploring the mysteries of the human body), for John Hunter did not have to work totally alone and in the dark, but this book details well the lengths John Hunter went through to learn about human anatomy and how nature works--endless hours of study dissecting human and animal subjects to form himself a menagerie of preserved anatomies and thorough documentation of his findings, which kept him busy almost seventeen hours a day easily.

And, Moore of course details the lengths John Hunter went through to get his case studies.... Hunter did nothing short of grave robbing and human experimentation in his studies, receiving cadavers through a back door of his lab like some Dr. Frankenstein, or paying the poor for their use in experiments of his own. It is even related in one chapter that Hunter even possibly experimented on himself when trying to determine whether syphilis and gonorrhea were the same virus or two different diseases altogether.

Hunter's conclusions were not always accurate (or correct), and though he had found many techniques that became the basis for a lot of modern surgical practice, he didn't know all that much about sterilization, so many of his ideas were hindered by poor practice.

But this book is a wonderful study of a scientific mind, one that worked off of evidence and study rather than accepting knowledge without criticism from up on high. He proposed that monkey skulls and human skulls were quite similar and most likely formed from the same stem. Of course, Hunter had his critics in his time and his naysayers, but Moore gets quite deeply into the life and studies of this genius to whom we owe great debts. The book is also a great reminder that ideas don't come out of nowhere but are often developed over time--centuries, even. Was Hunter the true author of evolution and natural selection? No, for Darwin was the one who found the mechanism of evolution, so this book makes a great case for the evolution of ideas as well as the evolution of surgery. And along the way, many notables of history step in to make stage appearances--certainly, following the life of John Hunter is also following the story of 18th century thought and art.

Moore is a little too thrilled at times with the depth of her research, and some chapters become a little distracting for its weight of detail, but overall this is a great read, full of surprising and weighty information, and most of all the presentation of a thoughtful, rational mind--something that we don't really praise nowadays. Read more ›

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Medical Pioneer August 1, 2008

By John D. Cofield TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

John Hunter was a blunt, irascible sort who was not disposed to accept established opinions on health and the functionings of the human body. Living in London during the 18th century, he quickly developed a reputation as an iconoclast who rejected tradition and sought to learn as much as he could about human anatomy. This necessitated a strong stomach and a willingness to flout the law. Since dissecting a human body was against the law, Hunter and others who wished to do so had to be willing to deal with unsavory body snatchers who haunted cemeteries and execution sites.

This fascinating biography is divided into chapters with headings similar to those found in hard boiled detective stories. Each describes one of Hunter's famous human or animal dissections and traces the expansion of knowledge that resulted. The descriptions are colorful and vivid and do an excellent job of depicting the full sight, sound, and smell of London in the 1700s. The stories of Hunter's dissections and his surgeries, many surprisingly complex and invasive despite the lack of anesthesia and antiseptics, fill the reader with awe and admiration.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating account of the life of a surgical giant January 27, 2010

By Richard Hodgman

Amazon Verified Purchase

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 Read more ›