Download The Knife Man: The Extraordinary Life and Times of John Hunter, Father of Modern Surgery AudioBook Free
When Robert Louis Stevenson composed his gothic horror story of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, he established the house of the genial doctor-turned-fiend on the home of John Hunter. The choice was understandable, for Hunter was both broadly acclaimed and greatly feared. From humble origins, John Hunter increased to become the most famous anatomist and physician of the 18th hundred years. In a day and age when procedures were crude, extremely agonizing, and frequently fatal, he declined medieval traditions to forge a trend in surgery founded on pioneering methodical experiments. Using the knowledge he gained from countless individuals dissections, Hunter worked well to improve medical care for both poorest and the best-known information of the era - including Sir Joshua Reynolds and the young Lord Byron. An insatiable university student of most life-forms, Hunter was also a specialist naturalist. He placed exotic animals in his country menagerie and dissected the first animals cut back by Captain Make from Australia. Ultimately, his research led him to expound highly controversial views on age the Earth, as well as evenly heretical values on the origins of life more than 60 years before Darwin publicized his famous theory. Although a central body of the Enlightenment, Hunter's tireless search for individuals corpses immersed him deep in the sinister world of body snatching. He paid exorbitant amounts for stolen cadavers and even plotted successfully to steal the body of Charles Byrne, famous in his day as the "Irish giant". In The Blade Man, Wendy Moore unveils John Hunter's murky and macabre world - a world characterized by general public hangings, key expeditions to dank churchyards, and gruesome individuals dissections in pungent attic rooms. This is a fascinating family portrait of a remarkable pioneer and his determined battle to haul surgery out of the realms of meaningless superstitious ritual and in to the dawn of modern remedies.
