Unveiling the Legacy of Gray's Anatomy: A Journey Through Time

You must have seen the movie Gray's Anatomy, or maybe you have read the book. Well, if you haven't, then it is possible you are not someone inclined to medical books, or familiar with watching ABC.

Gray's anatomy book has been in existence for over 100 years, and we then begin to wonder why the book has that much importance. Let's discuss gray's anatomy in this post very fast and understand what happened and how it became prominent.

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During Victorian Era in London at Saint George's hospital, was an illustrator named Henry Gray who was the book illustrator for the dissection rooms of the hospital. Henry Gray drew lots of anatomical structure in books, including "The Structure and Use of The Spleen" which he sold but the it didn't make much sales. He also met with Henry Vandyke Carter and at that point, some publishers wanted Gray to create a book for everything in the body.

The book was meant to be a manual for surgeons so they can use it in the operating room to perform surgeries. The book was to be very detailed and big to be able to cover everything needed but then it should be small to be able to bring into the surgery room. At the time, surgical books were small books with pictures and footnotes illustrating the image. In cases were the image has to be bigger, captions will be written around them or write the name of the image on the structure. To make a better version, Gray, had to do the writing, while Carter would be the illustrator.

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They intended to do 300 illustration and that would be a very tedious job as there will be need for fresh dissection but this would be difficult as only bodies of people convicted to death could be used after they have been hanged. Due to this difficulty in finding bodies, people began to dig up fresh bodies that were just buried, and sold them to medical schools. These people were known as resurrectionist and people were not fine with it. So they pressured the government to change the law so medical schools could access bodies and their loved ones could be buried in peace.

The anatomy act was then passed which allowed for medical student to use corpses that were not claimed within 48 hours, or objected by the family for medical purposes to be taken to the dissecting table. This helped Gray and Carter access lots of body and complete the book. After the publication, the book made lots of sales and Henry Gray did something that kept his name in the book till date. He named it Gray's Anatomy, and made Henry Vandyke Carter name very small that it wasn't noticeable. After Henry Gray, T Holmes wrote 7 other editions, then TP Pick, TB Johnston and J Whilis, TB Johnston and DV & F Davies, R Warwick & PL Williams, Susan Standring and today, it has been existing for about 150 years and has released 41 editions since its first publication.

While I will say that the success of the book can be attributed to quality work done by Charles and Gray, but also it can be said that it was successful as a result of corpses of people who were used. But either ways, we are able to read Gray's Anatomy book and enjoy the movie even though they are two completely different things but they have helped the medical world, medical students and practitioners alike.

Read More

https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/the-anatomist-a-true-story-of-grays-anatomy-20080216-gds19a.html
https://www.jci.org/articles/view/39002
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2673841/