The Knife Man. The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery - Hardcover

Moore, Wendy

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0593052099 ISBN 13: 9780593052099

Publisher: Bantam Press, 2005

Synopsis

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, he reputedly based the house of the genial doctor turned fiend on the home of the 18th century surgeon and anatomist John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter combined an altruistic determination to advance scientific knowledge with dark dealings that brought him into daily contact with the sinister Georgian underworld. In 18th century London, Hunter was a man both acclaimed and feared. Despite humble beginnings and poor academic prowess, John Hunter was to become the best-known anatomist of his day. At a time when operations were crude, painful and often fatal, Hunter revolutionized surgical practice through his groundbreaking scientific experiments. Rejecting Classical doctrines and medieval superstitions, he grounded surgery in experimental research and factual evidence. Driven by an insatiable curiosity, Hunter dissected thousands of human bodies, using the knowledge he gained to improve medical care for countless patients. Treating not only the poor but also some of the most illustrious characters of the time, such as Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron, he was appointed Surgeon Extraordinary to King George III and served in the Seven Years War where, following long, bloody battles, he patched up the unfortunate casualties' musket wounds and bayonet injuries. Considered by many to be the father of modern surgery, Hunter was also an eminent naturalist; he dissected the first creatures brought back from Captain Cook's voyages to Australia and kept exotic animals in his country menagerie in Earls Court; his eventual thesis outlining his ideas on evolution included a passage headed, 'On the origin of species'. Written some 60 years before Darwin's famous paper, this potentially groundbreaking work was suppressed on religious grounds by the Royal Society. Ultimately, he created the largest anatomical collection of its kind - which has been called 'a museum of evolution' - still to be seen in central London. Although a leading figure of the Enlightenment, and friend to many influential men of his age, including Sir Joseph Banks, Benjamin Franklin and James Watt, Hunter's tireless quest for human and animal bodies drove him to unparalleled extremes that immersed in the murky world of body-snatching. He paid large sums to his criminal contacts for the stolen corpses of men, women and children which were delivered in hampers to his back door. In The Knife Man Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter's extraordinary world - a world characterized by hangings at the Tyburn Tree, by gruesome expeditions to dank churchyards, and by countless human dissections in attic rooms. Meticulously researched, vividly drawn, this is also a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer in the emergent sciences of geology, biology and evolution and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realm of superstition and into the dawn of modern medicine.

About this title

About the Author

WENDY MOORE is a writer and journalist. After working as a reporter for local newspapers she has specialized in health and medical topics for more than 20 years. Her work has been published in a range of newspapers and magazines, including The Guardian, The Observer and the British Medical Journal. Having written extensively on medical history, she obtained the Diploma in the History of Medicine from the Society of Apothecaries (DHMSA) in 1999 and won the Maccabean prize for best dissertation in that year. She lives in south London with her partner and two children. The Knife Man is her first book.

Edition details

• Publisher: Bantam Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0593052099
• ISBN 13: 9780593052099
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 496