The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy
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Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Written By: Bill Hayes
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 611
EAN: 9780345456892
ISBN: 0345456890
Label: Ballantine Books
Manufacturer: Ballantine Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: 2007-12-26
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Release Date: 2007-12-26
Studio: Ballantine Books
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Editorial Reviews for The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy
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"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.” - The New Yorker
"All laud and honor to Hayes....In perusing the body's 650 muscles and 206 bones, he has made the case that we are, as the psalmist wrote, "fearfully and wonderfully made" and that dissection has an aesthetic all its own. The act of carving open a body becomes, in this context, a perverse act of love, a desecration that consecrates "the extraordinary, the inner architecture of the human form." - The Washington Post
"How do you write a book about someone about whom next to nothing is known? For most writers, the answer would be move on to the next subject. But Bill Hayes has an unusual set of skills. The author of previous books on insomnia and blood, he is part science writer, part memoirist, part culture explainer. “The Anatomist,” his appealing new book about the man behind Gray’s Anatomy, combines his search for the remaining traces of Henry Gray with a memoir of his own experience as a dissection student and a scalpel’s-eye tour of the body." - The New York Times
"Some of [Hayes's] most memorable writing describes the dissection classes he attended in San Francisco. We are treated to a selection of fascinating anatomical snippets about, for example, how to trace evidence of the sealed hole in the fetal heart through which the mother's blood enters; or how to find the kidney in a cadaver; or that blood flowing out of the heart is first used to feed the heart itself; or, best of all, a structural analysis of how the Queen manages to deliver such a uniquely restrained wave." - Nature: The International Weekly Journal of Science
The classic medical text known as Gray’s Anatomy is one of the most famous books ever written. Now, on the 150th anniversary of its publication, acclaimed science writer and master of narrative nonfiction Bill Hayes has written the fascinating, never-before-told true story of how this seminal volume came to be. A blend of history, science, culture, and Hayes’s own personal experiences, The Anatomist is this author’s most accomplished and affecting work to date.
With passion and wit, Hayes explores the significance of Gray’s Anatomy and explains why it came to symbolize a turning point in medical history. But he does much, much more. Uncovering a treasure trove of forgotten letters and diaries, he illuminates the astonishing relationship between the fiercely gifted young anatomist Henry Gray and his younger collaborator H. V. Carter, whose exquisite anatomical illustrations are masterpieces of art and close observation. Tracing the triumphs and tragedies of these two extraordinary men, Hayes brings an equally extraordinary era–the mid-1800s–unforgettably to life.
But the journey Hayes takes us on is not only outward but inward–through the blood and tissue and organs of the human body–for The Anatomist chronicles Hayes’s year as a student of classical gross anatomy, performing with his own hands the dissections and examinations detailed by Henry Gray 150 years ago. As Hayes’s acquaintance with death deepens, he finds his understanding and appreciation of life deepening in unexpected and profoundly moving ways.
The Anatomist is more than just the story of a book. It is the story of the human body, a story whose beginning and end we all know and share but that, like all great stories, is infinitely rich in between.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: Anatomy for Everyperson
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Anatomist
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The Anatomist
Comment: Very interesting book with a different perspective of being a biography
with a personal story of the author. Lots of background on everybody
concerned. Its not just Gray's Anatomy but the collaboration of Gray and
Carter. Not too technical but informative.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Good Tale, but Author suffers from TMJ and ... TMI
Comment: 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.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Hayes does it again. A must read!
Comment: 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.
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More Information on The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy
The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy | COSMOS magazine
The Anatomist is not just the story of the 1858 medical textbook we call Gray's Anatomy (originally titled Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical). It's also a personal memoir from Bill ...
The anatomist : a true story of Gray's anatomy [WorldCat.org]
Get this at a library near you! -- Author: [Bill Hayes] -- Related Subjects: [Gray, Henry, 1825-1861. Gray, Henry, 1825-1861. Anatomy. Carter, H. V. (Henry Vandyke), 1831-1897.
Hayes, Bill : The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy
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Hayes, Bill. [http://www.redroom.com/publishedwork/anatomist-true-story-grays-anatomy The Anatomist: a True story of Gray's Anatomy. NY:Ballantine, 2008.
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