The knife man

  • W. Moore
UK: Bantam price £7.99, pp 640 ISBN 0553816187 | ISBN: 0-553-81618-7

This is a stunning biography of John Hunter, the pioneering anatomist, surgeon and founder of scientific dentistry. Lurking behind a gruesome cover and a most inappropriate title, presumably designed to appeal on airport bookshelves, this gem of a book takes you straight back to the enthralling world of eighteenth century London. Chapter titles such as 'The Professor's testicle' and 'The Surgeon's penis' indicate the lively approach of the author and should appeal to students and junior staff.

There can seldom have been anyone as vibrantly alive as John Hunter. Surviving on only four hours' sleep every night (with an hour's nap in the afternoon), for much of his life he had a family and staff of more than 50 revolving around him. Yet he spent much of his time with the dead, both human and animal. Driven by profound curiosity about the mechanisms of life and free from deference to ancient texts, this self-taught young man from a small Scottish farm came to be a central figure and celebrity in London. Society lionised him and clamoured for personal consultations (or post-mortems on their loved ones, especially when money and property were involved).

There is a shocking and ghoulish side to this story, involving his dealings with body-snatchers; indeed this and his animal experiments led to his later being a role model for 'Dr Frankenstein' and 'Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde'. However, fame and public curiosity enabled him to get away with much that would previously have offended. Almost single-handedly Hunter, the celebrity surgeon of his day, made post-mortems acceptable to the upper classes, who would previously have been violently opposed to any interference with the remains of their relatives. Instead of death coming when the divine finger pointed at someone whose time was up, Hunter showed that death usually had a systemic cause. His immense knowledge of the comparative anatomy of creatures then being brought back from every corner of the globe, even led him to speculate that species developed from common ancestors, some 70 years before Darwin published The origin of species.

At the start of Hunter's career would-be surgeons needed only to demonstrate a good knowledge of Latin to enter the profession. This was so that they could repeat Roman and mediaeval operative techniques. Hunter's ideas were to change all of this. It was not enough to slavishly repeat the often-unsuccessful operations of the past. It was necessary to review and modify techniques in the light of experience. Hunter's influence and the Anatomy Act of 1832 were eventually to end the need for body-snatching and to stimulate professional medical and dental training.

With many of Hunter's specimens, preparations, papers and illustrations still being on view in the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons, London, I cannot recommend enough this scholarly, but vividly written biography.