culture & training firegeezer on 09 Apr 2008 12:08 pm
Gray’s Anatomy Turns 150
GRAY’S ANATOMY, DOUBTLESS THE WORLD’S BEST-KNOWN MEDICAL BOOK, is celebrating it’s 150th anniversary this year.
Much in the way that students of higher math are spotted by their calculators hooked onto their belts, when you see a firefighter walking around with a Gray’s under their arm, then you know that they’re enrolled in the paramedic class.
In 1855 Henry Gray and Henry Vandyke Carter, both surgeons at St. George’s Hospital in London, began collaborating on a practical textbook on anatomy. Together they performed the necessary dissections with Gray writing the text and Carter drawing the exquisite and extremely accurate illustrations.
Henry Gray
When it was published in 1858 under the title Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical it became an instant best-seller. The current 39th edition has 1,600 pages, 2,260 illustrations and weighs 11 pounds. Alas, none of Gray’s text nor Carter’s illustrations are in the latest editions due to the constant upgrading. The current edition is also now available on CD-ROM. The upcoming 40th edition will be released this September as part of the sesquicentennial celebration.
The London Telegraph has a marvelous story about a British doctor who, while confined in a Japanese prisoner of war camp, memorized the entire book. The article is threaded with a nice concise history of the text and I urge that you read it HERE.
The Wikipedia entry for Gray’s is HERE.
on 10 Apr 2008 at 2:01 am 1.Christian Lewalter said …
Know, I understand the title of the TV-Series Grey´s Anatomy. In Germany, theres a similar Book - the “Pschyrembel”, first published in 1931