The Knife Man:
The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter,
Father of Modern Surgery
by Wendy Moore

From Amazon:

Brilliant anatomist, foul-mouthed and well met, avid empiricist and grave robber, John Hunter cut an astonishing figure in Georgian England. Born in Scotland in 1728, he followed his brother, a renowned physician, to London and into the intellectually grasping, fiercely competitive world of professional medicine. With ample servings of 18th-century filth and gore, Moore offers a vivid look at this remarkable period in science history, when many of the most impressive advances were made by relentless iconoclasts like Hunter. In an age when ancient notions of bodily humors still smothered medical thinking, Hunter challenged orthodoxy whenever facts were absent—which was usually the case. A prodigious experimenter—to the point of obsession—he dissected thousands of corpses and countless animals (many of them living) in his effort to define the nature of the human body. Yet he was also an early adherent of medical minimalism, shunning bloodletting by default and advocating physical therapy over invasive surgeries. This is a deftly written and informative tale that will please readers of science history, period buffs and everyone in between.

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John Hunter, in the late 1700s revolutionized surgery and modern medicine. Before he was a surgeon he was an Anatomist. It wasn't easy being an Anatomist. One had to have cadavers to dissect and they best way to get them was grave robbing. And the dissection season was in winter since corpses rotted too fast in the summer. Given these handicaps he performed miracles and provided a scientific basis for medicine in a time still ruled by blood letting. It wasn't even known what a human fetus looked like at different stages because one couldn't look. It wasn't until 1754 when a full term dead pregnant women was obtained that the dissection revealed this the first time. Hunter had an amazing artist that did the sketches. Here is a charcoal sketch from that full term pregnancy.

Not only was Hunter most interesting but the Moore tells the tale well. Interesting times. I wouldn't want to be there, particularly if I needed surgery. Some more etchings from Hunter's dissections. John's brother William took the credit for John's work but that is part of this fascinating story.

William Hunter: Anatomia uteri humani gravidi tabulis illustrata = The anatomy of the human gravid uterus exhibited in figures