{"product_id":"the-knife-man-isbn-9780767916530","title":"The Knife Man","description":"\u003cb\u003eThe vivid, often gruesome portrait of the 18th-century pioneering surgeon and father of modern medicine, John Hunter.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen Robert Louis Stevenson wrote his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he based the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both widely acclaimed and greatly feared.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eFrom humble origins, John Hunter rose to become the most famous anatomist and surgeon of the eighteenth century. In an age when operations were crude, extremely painful, and often fatal, he rejected medieval traditions to forge a revolution in surgery founded on pioneering scientific experiments. Using the knowledge he gained from countless human dissections, Hunter worked to improve medical care for both the poorest and the best-known figures of the era—including Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAn insatiable student of all life-forms, Hunter was also an expert naturalist. He kept exotic creatures in his country menagerie and dissected the first animals brought back by Captain Cook from Australia. Ultimately his research led him to expound highly controversial views on the age of the earth, as well as equally heretical beliefs on the origins of life more than sixty years before Darwin published his famous theory.\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eAlthough a central figure of the Enlightenment, Hunter’s tireless quest for human corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body snatching. He paid exorbitant sums for stolen cadavers and even plotted successfully to steal the body of Charles Byrne, famous in his day as the “Irish giant.”\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003eIn \u003ci\u003eThe Knife Man\u003c\/i\u003e, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter’s murky and macabre world—a world characterized by public hangings, secret expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome human dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined struggle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and into the dawn of modern medicine.Praise for \u003ci\u003ethe Knife Man\u003c\/i\u003e:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“The surgeon John Hunter (1728–93) is not a well-known name outside specialist circles, although that scandalous situation should be corrected by Wendy Moore’s marvelous biography.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Times Higher\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Definitely not for the squeamish, Moore’s visceral portrait of this complex and brilliant man offers a wonderful insight into sickness, suffering, and surgery in the 18th century.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Guardian (UK)\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Moore’s feel for pace and narrative is impeccable. Her book contains just the right amount of background scenery to bring Hunter alive without swamping him.… She is, at last, the biographer Hunter deserves.” —\u003ci\u003eThe Independent\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eWendy Moore \u003c\/b\u003eis a writer and a journalist. After working as a reporter for local newspapers she has specialized in health and medical topics for more than twenty years. As a freelance journalist her work has been published in a range of newspapers and magazines—including the \u003ci\u003eGuardian\u003c\/i\u003e, the \u003ci\u003eObserver\u003c\/i\u003e, and the \u003ci\u003eBritish Medical Journal\u003c\/i\u003e—and has won several awards. Having written extensively on medical history, she obtained the Diploma in the History of Medicine from the Society of Apothecaries (DHMSA) in 1999 and won the Maccabaean Prize for the best dissertation that year. This is her first book. Upon its publication in the United Kingdom, \u003ci\u003eThe Knife Man\u003c\/i\u003e was named Consumer Book of the Year by the Medical Journalists’ Association. Moore lives in South London with her partner, Peter, also a journalist, and two children, Sam and Susannah.CHAPTER 1 \u003cbr\u003e The Coach Driver’s Knee\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003eSt. George’s Hospital, Hyde Park Corner, London  December 1785 \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003c\/b\u003eThe patient faced an agonizing choice. Above the cries and moans  of fel­low sufferers on the fetid ward, he listened as the surgeon outlined the dilemma.  If the large swelling at the back of his knee was left to continue growing, it would  soon burst, leading to certain and painful death. If, on the other hand, the leg  was amputated above the knee, there was a slim chance he would survive the crude  operation–provided he did not die of shock on the operating table, or bleed to death  soon after, or succumb to infection on the filthy ward days later–but he would be  permanently dis­abled. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For the forty-five-year-old hackney coach driver, both options  were un­thinkable. Since he had first noticed the swelling in the hollow behind his  knee three years ago, the lump had grown steadily, until it was the size of an orange.(1)  It throbbed continuously and was now so painful, he could barely walk. Extended on  the hospital bed before him, his leg and foot were hideously swollen, while his skin  had turned an unsightly mottled brown. Once the coachman had gained admittance to  St. George’s, having per­suaded the governors he was a deserving recipient of their  charity, the sur­geon on duty had lost no time in making a diagnosis. He had seen  popliteal aneurysms at exactly the same spot on numerous occasions and knew the prognosis  all too well. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e It was a common-enough problem in the cabdriver’s line of work. Aneurysms  could happen to anyone, anywhere in the body, but they ap­peared to occur with particular  frequency among coach drivers, and others in equestrian occupations in Georgian London,  in the popliteal artery be­hind the knee. The condition, in which a section of artery  that has been in­jured or otherwise weakened begins to bulge to form a blood-filled  sac, may well have been triggered by the wearing of high leather riding boots, which  rubbed the back of the knee.(2) As the aneurysm swelled, it not only became extremely  painful but made walking exceedingly difficult. Whatever the cause, the outcome was  often an early death–if not from the condition it­self, then from the treatment generally  meted out. To lose his leg, even sup­posing the coach driver survived such a drastic  procedure in an era long before anesthesia or antiseptics, would mean never being  able to work again. But to carry on working, navigating his horse-drawn carriage  over London’s rutted and congested roads, would be equally impossible if the lump  was left to grow. Either way, the cabbie feared destitution and the workhouse. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But there was a third choice, the surgeon at his bedside now confided on that early  December day, for a coachman sufficiently willing or desper­ate. In his slow Scottish  lilt, redolent of his humble farming origins, the surgeon laid out his scheme for  a daring new operation. Surrounded by the poxed, maimed, and diseased bodies of London’ s poorest wretches, hud­dled in their beds on the drafty ward, the cabbie resolved  to put his life in the hands of John Hunter. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Without a doubt, John Hunter’s reputation  was well known to the coach driver long before he limped through the portal of St.  George’s, for he was generally acknowledged as one of the best-skilled surgeons in  London, if not Europe, and was a favorite among the well-heeled and the unshod alike.  As well as working for no recompense patching up the poor in St. George’s, he was  in constant demand from the fee-paying patients who thronged each morning to his  fashionable home in Leicester Square or called him out for consultations in the elegant  drawing rooms of their West End villas. For all his blunt manners, coarse speech,  and disdain for fashion–he currently sported an unkempt beard and tied his tawny-colored  hair behind his head in preference to wearing the customary wig– Hunter was firmly  established in Georgian high society. He visited court as surgeon extraordinary to  George III, dined with the society artist Sir Joshua Reynolds, and debated science  with his close friend, the well-connected naturalist Sir Joseph Banks. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now aged  fifty-seven, with seventeen years’ service at St. George’s un­der his belt, Hunter  was renowned for his pioneering and controversial op­erations. Only two months before  the coach driver’s admission, he had skillfully cut away from the neck of a thirty-seven-year-old  man a massive benign tumor weighing more than eight pounds and roughly the size of  an extra head. The relieved patient had walked away with only a long, neat scar as  souvenir of his ordeal.(3) Hunter was popular with the medical stu­dents, too. The  coachman had watched the eager pupils trooping devotedly after their teacher on his  ward rounds, for more students flocked to Hunter’s side than to all the other surgeons  at St. George’s put together.(4) Aspiring young surgeons traveled not only from the  far reaches of the British Isles but even from across the Atlantic to “walk the wards”  at Hunter’s side and hear their hero expound on his radical views in the pri­vate  lectures he held at his home each winter. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But the cabbie would have heard darker  stories, too, whispered on the wards, insinuated in newspapers, and muttered in coffeehouses  and cockpits, for Hunter was as much feared and despised as admired in eighteenth-century  London. Although his pupils idolized their master, and patients often had cause to  thank the bluff but honest surgeon, Hunter’s fiery temper and maverick views had earned  him powerful enemies within the four walls of St. George’s, and beyond. While aristocrats  bowed to his medical advice, and denizens of the Royal Society–the engine room of  eighteenth-century progress–hung on his every pronouncement, Hunter was isolated  at St. George’s. To his fellow surgeons, he was at best a laugh­ingstock and at worst  a reckless fool. And he had quarreled, too, with sev­eral of the city’s other leading  practitioners, not least his own elder brother. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e To the students, the explanation  for this was straightforward: Hunter was simply so far ahead of his contemporaries  that he stood alone. But his rivals at St. George’s had other opinions. They decried  Hunter’s novel approach and controversial methods, preferring to bleed, blister,  and purge their patients to early graves–in strict accordance with classical teaching–than  to question conventional modes of practice. They even en­couraged Hunter’s most vociferous  enemy, a mediocre house surgeon named Jessé Foot, who worked in a neighboring hospital,  and whom Hunter had upset by criticizing a surgical appliance the young upstart had  invented. In Foot’s jaundiced view, Hunter was “a very inferior, dangerous, and irregular  practical surgeon” who was embroiled in “continual war” at St. George’s.(5) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e But  there were stranger stories still about the rebellious surgeon. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Hunter was known  to keep rare and exotic wild beasts–including a lion, a jackal, a dingo, and two  leopards–at his country home in the tranquil vil­lage of Earls Court, a few miles  west of London. In this rural retreat, the surgeon performed countless experiments  on animals both dead and alive. Innumerable research papers, presented to his friends  in the Royal Society, detailed his bizarre trials, such as grafting a cockerel’s  testicle into the belly of a hen–an early step toward transplanting body parts in  humans–as well as the freezing of fish and rabbits’ ears in a forlorn attempt to invent  a scheme for human immortality. At this prototype research center, Hunter dissected  great carcasses, including whales washed up on the banks of the Thames, apes sent  back from explorations into unmapped territories, and elephants donated by Queen  Charlotte. It was here, too, that he experi­mented on living animals, tying down  squealing pigs, sheep, and dogs for lengthy dissections in order to explore how healthy  organs function and to test ways to improve surgery. Although by now they had become  inured to the sight of rare beasts grazing the lawns, Hunter’s curious neighbors  still gaped on occasions when the surgeon set out from Earls Court driving a cart  pulled by three Asian buffalo, headed for the West End. Arriving at his Leicester  Square town house, a drawbridge could be swiftly lowered– and just as swiftly raised–to  allow mysterious cargoes to trundle in and out.(6) \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e The enterprising surgeon did  not confine his zeal for research to the animal kingdom, however, for Hunter had built  up his surgical expertise through an unrivaled knowledge of human anatomy. Since  arriving in London almost four decades earlier, Hunter had dissected human bodies  in unprecedented numbers. By his own admission, he had carved up “some thousands”  during his lengthy career.(7) It was through this relentless first­hand exploration  of the human body, rather than by reading the works of the ancient Greeks and Romans  or passively watching over the shoulders of other practitioners, that Hunter had  become such a skilled operator. Although other surgeons of the day had become adept  at certain proce­dures through trial and error, many operations performed in London’ s char­ity hospitals were still risky gambles, due to ignorance of anatomy and physiology.  Whenever Hunter cut, probed, sliced, and sawed, he knew pre­cisely what lay beneath.  He possessed a better knowledge than any other surgeon in town of the exact whereabouts,  functions, and habits of every organ, muscle, blood vessel, and tissue, healthy or  diseased, that he was likely to encounter.","brand":"Crown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46304538624229,"sku":"NP9780767916530","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780767916530.jpg?v=1767740070","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/the-knife-man-isbn-9780767916530","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}