Gray's Greyness

science and image Gray ’s greyness

What a piece of work is Man! But not in some relentlessly dull anatomy books of the nineteenth century, when ‘style’ was falling out of fashion. Or perhaps Henry Gray thought the wonders of the body spoke for themselves.

but it did mark the growing domination of Martin Kemp the plain, technical textbook, epitomized by he signal visual characteristic that Henry Gray’s Anatomy, Descriptive and Sur- 8 marks the extensive and profound gical, which, as Gray’s Anatomy, established Tprofessionalization of the sciences and itself as the anatomical bible for generations technologies in the nineteenth century is the of students required to ‘name the parts’. First progressive dominance of a style of represen- published in 1858, bound in busi- tation that deliberately eschews stylishness. ness-like brown buck- ram, it achieved an awe- What I am calling the ‘non-style’ — a some degree of absti- technical mode of illustration in which nence, and bids fair to be LONDON INSTITUTE LIBRARY, WELLCOME the dry imparting of information is the the most remorselessly unexciting book ever sole conscious focus — arrived in written on an engaging subject. different disciplines at different times. It begins with no eloquent preface, Engineering drawing around 1800, extolling the ethical worth of dissection to especially in France, played a reveal the wonders of bodily mecha- pioneering role. By 1850, there was no nisms. Instead, it plunges almost branch of institutionalized science that immediately in medias res with osteo- remained untouched, and much logical descriptions. And, having twentieth-century illustration is its finished his even-pace survey direct heir. with the recto-vesical fascia, The transformation was particularly Gray’s only conclusion is a 30- conspicuous in medical illustration. The page index. portrayal of the human body, diseased, The 363 plates in the deformed or dissected, had always been a lucidly descriptive text fraught business. A heroic mode of illustra- are by the pictorially tion displaying elegant figures in brave pos- named Henry tures with decorous adornments in gracious Vandyke Carter, settings became the favoured presentation in displaying the the erudite humanist picture-books of parts of the anatomy, from Andreas Vesalius and Charles body (all parts Henry Vandyke Carter’s “Lymphatics of the Estienne in the Renaissance to Bernhard and no wholes) Upper Extremity”, from Henry Gray’s Anatomy, Siegfried Albinus in the Enlightenment. in sober, mat- Descriptive and Surgical, 1858. Such volumes, grand in format, expensive to ter-of-fact line produce, and often sold by subscription, illustrations. The woodcut technique is used istic picture and a conventional diagram. were hardly the stuff of routine teaching. to achieve a single, consistent level of un- Such mapping serves to guide the student in The rise of the professional medical seductive description, the register of which dissection and memorizing, in much the school in the nineteenth century did not sig- is unwavering throughout the book. The same way that a terrestrial map helps us to nal the immediate end of the picture-book, plainness is all the more striking when Gray plot and memorize our way around a city. draws directly on the work of his stylish pre- Gray’s sterling sobriety survived more or decessors — debts that are acknowledged in less unscathed through many editions. Pho- his captions. tography, sectional anatomy (which devel- A striking case in point is his use of Paolo oped to a point of considerable sophistica- Mascagni’s Vasorum Lymphaticorum Cor- tion in the second half of the last century), poris Humani (1787). Now famed for his microscopy and, later, X-rays were all long grandiose project for a life-sized human resisted. Gradually, during the course of this anatomy in three great folios, Mascagni illus- century, successive editors have introduced a trated the lymphatics with vivid pictorial fresh battery of illustrative techniques, effects in strikingly arranged figures, limbs including state-of-the-art microscopy and,

WELLCOME INSTITUTE LIBRARY, LONDON INSTITUTE LIBRARY, WELLCOME and organs. Gray took over a few vestiges of inevitably, the latest in computer graphics. Mascagni’s pictorial tendencies, but his Between the brightly coloured covers of the linear style drains the illustrations of any present edition (the 38th), the only consis- visual effects that did not serve his rigorously tent visual characteristic that can be dis- didactic aims. cerned is a cacophony of styles and registers Whereas Mascagni’s large-scale copper of communication. It is most unlikely that engravings demonstrate vessels and glands Gray would have approved. in three dimensions, modelled in light and Martin Kemp is in the Department of the History of shade, Gray’s small woodcuts map the course Art, University of Oxford, 35 Beaumont Street, Oxford Henry Gray’s Anatomy, Descriptive and Surgical: of the lymphatics in a manner that stands in OX1 2PG, UK. the first edition of 1858. an intermediate position between a natural- e-mail: [email protected]