The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy by Bill Hayes Read Free Book Online Page A

similar map, they slowly traverse the lower abdomen, pushing through layer after layer of abdominal tissue, acquiring new coats as they tunnel to their final destination: the scrotum. Though any man who has been kicked in the groin might not think so, these added layers actually provide protection. To make sure this journey was ingrained in our memory, as Dhillon spoke, he pulled successive, colored latex gloves over his right hand to represent each new layer—purple, green, pink, and finally, blue—each time balling his fingers into a thick, rubbery fist.
    Two teaching assistants round out the team. Because Christy and Aaron were so recently students themselves, they are especially helpful in sharing mnemonics and other time-saving study tips. Of all the instructors for this course, though, Dana herself has made the strongest impression on me. In what I take as the highest form of flattery, she never treats me like an observer but as one of the 121 students in the class, even grilling me good-naturedly in the oral pop quizzes she sometimes springs during lab. Given her obvious enthusiasm for the subject of anatomy, I was surprised to learn, though, that Dana had never set out to become an anatomist.
    “I’m definitely an ‘accidental anatomist,’” she told me one afternoon as we chatted on the way up to lab. After earning a B.S. in nutrition, a master’s in biology, and a Ph.D. in physiology, Dana had planned to go straight into medical research. But there was a surprise on the menu: an offer of a teaching job landed on her desk—UCSF was seeking a physiology instructor—and it was unexpectedly tempting. She accepted and was amazed to find how much she enjoyed teaching. Then she met Sexton and realized she would also like to teach the subject her new friend was so passionate about. He thought this was a fabulous idea; in fact, the anatomy department had an opening coming up. But first, Dana would have to turn herself into a great dissector. Sexton became her mentor. He spent hours and hours of extra time helping her learn how to perform the most difficult dissections. The greatest lesson he taught her, though, was one of aesthetics: how to make dissections beautiful.
    “For a year, I was here
all
the time dissecting,” Dana said once we had reached the thirteenth floor, “even every Saturday night. That’s the way you learn anatomy. You sit down with a dissection manual and a cadaver, and you just slowly go through everything.”
             
    I WOULD LOVE to have been an observer as Henry Gray learned the art of dissection. Colleagues who remembered him as a student invariably recalled a “most painstaking” and “methodical” worker but left no more telling details or anecdotes in the historical record. Fortunately, however, I am able to reconstruct the setting where the young Mr. Gray spent hundreds and probably thousands of hours quietly following his passion.
    A fifteen-minute walk from his family home on Wilton Street would have brought an eighteen-year-old Gray to the north end of Kinnerton Street, to the building where St. George’s anatomy courses were taught. In what he and his classmates probably found a dubious comparison, the premises were often likened to the inner architecture of the human ear. The building was set well back from the street, and, just as the ear canal leads to the eardrum, one passed through a long, narrow alley before reaching the main door. Completing the analogy, the school’s circular anatomical theater represented the spiraling cochlea at the innermost part of the ear. Lecture halls, an anatomical museum, and an impressive dissection lab rounded out the floor plan.
    That Kinnerton Street was a good four blocks from St. George’s Hospital was seen by the medical school administrators as a significant drawback but also a marked improvement over the previous accommodations. When the hospital established its school in 1829—sixteen years before Gray’s