No medical book has ever achieved the fame and longevity of Henry Gray's anatomy text. First published in 1858 under the title "Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical", the book was officially renamed Gray's Anatomy in 1938.
In 1925, American author Sinclair Lewis wrote in his novel Arrowsmith that three texts were important to a doctor's education:
* The Bible
* The works of Shakespeare
* Gray's Anatomy
Indeed, no medical book has ever achieved the fame and longevity of Henry Gray's anatomy text. First published in 1858 under the title "Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical", the book was officially renamed Gray's Anatomy in 1938.
Henry Gray FRS (1827 – 13 June 1861) was a British anatomist and surgeon most notable for publishing the book Gray's Anatomy. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) at the age of 25.
Henry Gray was a young anatomy instructor at St George’s Hospital when he decided to produce a guidebook on contemporary anatomy.
He was only in his twenties when he began work on the book in 1855. Gray’s Anatomy was published three years after Henry Gray asked Henry Vandyke Carter, a highly talented medical student and artist at St George’s, to do the drawings. The first color illustrations appeared in the 1887 edition. The book became an instant bestseller. Although the illustrations largely contributed to Gray’s Anatomy’s fame, Carter never received any income from the book.
Unfortunately, Gray contracted smallpox and died at the age of 34 just before the second edition was published. Carter went to India the same year the book was published, becoming a lecturer in anatomy and physiology at the Grant Medical School, and later became head of the department. He retired after spending thirty years in India, dying of tuberculosis in 1897.
Today's readers should remember that Gray's Anatomy was written when anesthesia and antibiotics did not yet exist, and electric lights could not be used to illuminate dissections or cuts.
It should also be remembered that the names of the poor men, women, or children used for the illustrations in this book, one of the most widely used books in medical history and which has never been out of print since its publication, will never be known.