The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery (review)

It is now a commonplace, almost the first rule that the aspiring historian learns, that writers can portray, reconstruct, "make out," create, or re-create the living or (much more easily) the dead with a fair degree of latitude. A fair degree, of course, is possible, but not beyond a consensus on evidence that makes any further creativity the source of incredulity. John Hunter, strangely without a major biographer in spite of the innumerable eulogies to his credit, has been "made out" in all sorts of ways. Clearly his role as the father of (English?) surgery springs to mind, but even in England his biographies have revealed several different people and were used for many different ends, notably by the Fellows of the Royal College of Surgeons. James Paget, for example, applauded him for turning surgeons into gentlemen. A number of twentieth-century hagiographers placed him (a Scotsman) in an English tradition reaching back to Sydenham (and sometimes Hippocrates). Who is Wendy Moore's John Hunter? Samuel Smilesian man must be the short answer: a rough-hewn, self-made, "lad o' pairts" who cut through the ignorance and prejudice of his day to create the seed that was to flower in all its glory in modern surgery. Within this volume the knife man cuts his way to fame convinced of the deliverance that a dedication to anatomy would bring. This belief sustains him every time he attempts an operation that his contemporaries know is neither indicated by the disease nor dictated by the rules of art.

The prime virtue of this book is that it brings Hunter to us as an indefatigable dissector and experimentalist in a way that a thoughtful glance at the catalog of the massive number of specimens once in the Hunterian Museum ought also to do. Wendy Moore has done a great deal of research in primary sources to resurrect this particular John Hunter, and she is to be thanked for it. Her evidence for the man as a tireless and, by any standards, brilliant anatomist is impressive and wholly convincing. She paints, too, a vivid picture of his life at Earl's Court, London, in his house with its menagerie, both of which he shared with his well-bred and poised wife, Anne (given Moore's portrayal of Hunter—"well known for his coarse language, disdain for etiquette, and casual dress"—it is not surprising that she finds their marriage "not an obvious match" [p. 170]).

The London circle within which this coarse-spoken Fellow of the Royal Society moved easily is fascinating and well documented here, but there is no hint of how, for example, the Whig Sir John Pringle got on with the Tory Sir Joseph Banks. The key to this intriguing circle may lie in Freemasonry, although there is no suggestion of this in Moore's analysis (the nearest we get to it is an entry in the index for freemartins).

Alongside the figure she paints of John Hunter, Moore's portrait of the slightly more fastidious William fleshes out much that one's prejudices might have led one to suspect (or hope for?) about this upstart: devious, acquisitive, a cold fish.

This is very much an "and times" biography—and none the worse for that, in theory, given that it is clearly aimed at a popular market. Any mention of a subject such as the voluntary hospital movement or, obviously, body snatching is a chance for an extended digression. Likewise, the text is decorated with quotes from Johnson, Smollett, and other picturesque observers of the period; almost every quote of this sort, meticulously footnoted to the originals, is, however, mightily familiar. The determination to give the reader lashings of flavor (to disguise what?) is irresistible to Moore. Waiting for Hunter's decision whether to operate in the famous popliteal aneurysm case, for example, we discover that "the tortured coach...