The Knife Man: Blood, Body Snatching, and the Birth of Modern SurgeryCrown, 2007 M12 18 - 352 pages The vivid, often gruesome portrait of the 18th-century pioneering surgeon and father of modern medicine, John Hunter. When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he based the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both widely acclaimed and greatly feared. From humble origins, John Hunter rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful, and often fatal, he rejected medieval traditions to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments. Using the knowledge he gained from countless human dissections, Hunter worked to improve medical care for both the poorest and the best-known figures of the era—including Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron. An insatiable student of all life-forms, Hunter was also an expert naturalist. He kept exotic creatures in his country menagerie and dissected the first animals brought back by Captain Cook from Australia. Ultimately his research led him to expound highly controversial views on the age of the earth, as well as equally heretical beliefs on the origins of life more than sixty years before Darwin published his famous theory. Although a central figure of the Enlightenment, Hunter’s tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body snatching. He paid exorbitant sums for stolen cadavers and even plotted successfully to steal the body of Charles Byrne, famous in his day as the “Irish giant.” In The Knife Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter’s murky and macabre world—a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine. |
From inside the book
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Page 14
... Edinburgh . But astute William had managed to pen- etrate English social circles , too , forging connections with influential men , such as the magistrate and writer Henry Fielding and the diarist Horace Walpole . Between coffeehouses ...
... Edinburgh . But astute William had managed to pen- etrate English social circles , too , forging connections with influential men , such as the magistrate and writer Henry Fielding and the diarist Horace Walpole . Between coffeehouses ...
Page 16
... Edinburgh and William to Glasgow University to study theology for a career in the Scottish kirk . Ignored by his father , indulged by his mother , and pampered by his older sisters , young " Jock " or " Johnny , " as he was variously ...
... Edinburgh and William to Glasgow University to study theology for a career in the Scottish kirk . Ignored by his father , indulged by his mother , and pampered by his older sisters , young " Jock " or " Johnny , " as he was variously ...
Page 18
... Edinburgh University to study anatomy , and in 1740 packed him off to London to learn the latest approach to childbirth , all with a view to setting up partnership together on William's return . Eldest brother James , mean- while , had ...
... Edinburgh University to study anatomy , and in 1740 packed him off to London to learn the latest approach to childbirth , all with a view to setting up partnership together on William's return . Eldest brother James , mean- while , had ...
Page 26
... Edinburgh University : " There I learned a good deal by my ears ; but almost nothing by my eyes ; and therefore , hardly anything to the purpose . The defect was , that the professor was obliged to demonstrate all the parts of the body ...
... Edinburgh University : " There I learned a good deal by my ears ; but almost nothing by my eyes ; and therefore , hardly anything to the purpose . The defect was , that the professor was obliged to demonstrate all the parts of the body ...
Page 32
... Edinburgh University , that his own former tutor , Professor Alexander Monro , was attracting stu- dents from across Europe with rising success . For Monro , however , working in a small city like Edinburgh presented considerable ...
... Edinburgh University , that his own former tutor , Professor Alexander Monro , was attracting stu- dents from across Europe with rising success . For Monro , however , working in a small city like Edinburgh presented considerable ...
Contents
1 | |
13 | |
31 | |
The Pregnant Womans Womb | 45 |
The Professors Testicle | 63 |
The Lizards Tails | 87 |
The Chimney Sweeps Teeth | 101 |
The Debutantes Spots | 111 |
The Chaplains Neck | 185 |
The Giants Bones | 199 |
The Poets Foot | 217 |
The Monkeys Skull | 237 |
The Anatomists Heart | 255 |
Acknowledgments | 277 |
Chronology | 280 |
Key Sources | 286 |
The Surgeons Penis | 125 |
The Kangaroos Skull | 145 |
The Electric Eels Peculiar Organs | 167 |
Notes | 289 |
Index | 332 |
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Common terms and phrases
anatomist anatomy aneurysm animals Anne army artery Baillie Banks blood bones British Byrne Byrne's century Cheselden collection College of Surgeons corpses Covent Garden creatures Daniel Solander dead death described died dissecting room Earls Court East Kilbride Edinburgh Edward Jenner eighteenth-century Essays and Observations Everard Home experiments fellow friends geon George George's Georgian Glasgow gonorrhea History of Medicine hospital human body Hunter brothers Hunterian Museum infection James Jermyn Street Jessé Foot Jessie Dobson John Abernethy John Hunter John's knife later lectures Leicester Square letter living London Memoir Monro never notes operation organs Ottley patients Peachey Percivall Pott physician Physiological Pott practice preparations published pupils recorded Royal College Royal Society scientific Scottish Short Account skull Solander species specimens Surgeons of England surgery surgical syphilis teeth tion tooth transplanting treatise tures venereal disease vessels William Clift William Hunter wound young