hormones were definitely speaking to him. “Avoid temptations,” he includes in a list of gentle reprimands, and, “Be careful to improve your thoughts when alone.” If idle hands are the devil’s tools, as the saying goes, then the devil was two mitts shy once winter session 1849 got under way.
Seemingly overnight, Carter’s diary turns into a chronicle of anatomizing. Not only does he dissect in class most days of the week but sometimes at home as well, using souvenirs, for lack of a better word, he had gotten at postmortems. “Got two eyes,” he reports one night, obviously pleased, as if
one
eye would have been a big disappointment. “Got kidney and heart,” another day. And, once, “Had offer of brain, but declined,” a rare demurral. He also obtains parts from the hospital’s morgue, the aptly named Dead House. Somehow, though, his hunger to dissect never sounds ghoulish. To read Carter’s entries is to watch a young man chasing after knowledge at full tilt. He misses lectures because he loses track of time in the lab. He works through lunchtime, missing out on eating. From lecture to lab, lecture to lab, he sometimes returns to Kinnerton Street three times in a day. Ever fastidious, Carter will often record how long he spends dissecting, as if he were a runner training for a race, pushing himself to beat his own record. Though he takes off Christmas Day, he is in the lab New Year’s morning.
Carter’s growing mastery of dissection does not go unnoticed. Ten weeks into the session, instructor Prescott Hewett asks him to make a “preparation” for the anatomical museum. In other words, he would dissect some body part, which would then be bottled and preserved in “spirits” (alcohol) for students to study for years to come. In general, a preparation would have been done by a faculty member, but Carter was obviously gifted. And excited! For three days, he nervously awaits word of his assignment. He is given a hand, it turns out. “With name to be added,” he writes, meaning his name will be affixed to the bottle for posterity.
With the preparation turning out well, Dr. Hewett presents his protégé with a copy of Quain’s
Anatomy,
a much-appreciated gift. Carter inscribes his name in the book and, on his way home, purchases a protective cover for it. His pleasure overflows to the next day, when he pages through the illustrations and paints all the arteries red. This “Q” is “fine work!” he writes.
By this time, January 1850, Henry Gray had been promoted from demonstrator of anatomy to the hospital’s postmortem examiner. The twenty-three-year-old had also just enjoyed the honor of having a paper read before the Royal Society. That he was so rapidly making a name for himself made a deep impact on Carter, as shortly becomes clear in the younger man’s diary: “Must work!” he admonishes himself. “ Gray getting on!” It is as though Gray were the pacesetter, and Carter, following a similar career path, does not want to lag behind for a moment.
That same day, Dr. Hewett had offered him a new project: to preserve some anatomical specimens not by dissecting but by drawing them instead. The subjects would be hospital patients with unusual maladies. Keen to help out, Carter agrees, and, two weeks later, he finds himself in the women’s-only “nurse’s room,” performing the delicate task of painting a woman’s diseased breast. Carter “manage[s] tolerably” and finishes in an hour, after which the breast is surgically removed. His next subject is a thigh of unspecified pathology.
Nowhere in his diary do I get the impression that Carter ever imagined he would be bridging medicine and art. True, his father was a working artist and he had grown up drawing and painting, but he had come to London to learn new skills, not brush up on old ones. Asking him to draw was like asking someone who is bilingual to translate—no big deal. However, Hewett, who as a young man had hoped to be a
Seemingly overnight, Carter’s diary turns into a chronicle of anatomizing. Not only does he dissect in class most days of the week but sometimes at home as well, using souvenirs, for lack of a better word, he had gotten at postmortems. “Got two eyes,” he reports one night, obviously pleased, as if
one
eye would have been a big disappointment. “Got kidney and heart,” another day. And, once, “Had offer of brain, but declined,” a rare demurral. He also obtains parts from the hospital’s morgue, the aptly named Dead House. Somehow, though, his hunger to dissect never sounds ghoulish. To read Carter’s entries is to watch a young man chasing after knowledge at full tilt. He misses lectures because he loses track of time in the lab. He works through lunchtime, missing out on eating. From lecture to lab, lecture to lab, he sometimes returns to Kinnerton Street three times in a day. Ever fastidious, Carter will often record how long he spends dissecting, as if he were a runner training for a race, pushing himself to beat his own record. Though he takes off Christmas Day, he is in the lab New Year’s morning.
Carter’s growing mastery of dissection does not go unnoticed. Ten weeks into the session, instructor Prescott Hewett asks him to make a “preparation” for the anatomical museum. In other words, he would dissect some body part, which would then be bottled and preserved in “spirits” (alcohol) for students to study for years to come. In general, a preparation would have been done by a faculty member, but Carter was obviously gifted. And excited! For three days, he nervously awaits word of his assignment. He is given a hand, it turns out. “With name to be added,” he writes, meaning his name will be affixed to the bottle for posterity.
With the preparation turning out well, Dr. Hewett presents his protégé with a copy of Quain’s
Anatomy,
a much-appreciated gift. Carter inscribes his name in the book and, on his way home, purchases a protective cover for it. His pleasure overflows to the next day, when he pages through the illustrations and paints all the arteries red. This “Q” is “fine work!” he writes.
By this time, January 1850, Henry Gray had been promoted from demonstrator of anatomy to the hospital’s postmortem examiner. The twenty-three-year-old had also just enjoyed the honor of having a paper read before the Royal Society. That he was so rapidly making a name for himself made a deep impact on Carter, as shortly becomes clear in the younger man’s diary: “Must work!” he admonishes himself. “ Gray getting on!” It is as though Gray were the pacesetter, and Carter, following a similar career path, does not want to lag behind for a moment.
That same day, Dr. Hewett had offered him a new project: to preserve some anatomical specimens not by dissecting but by drawing them instead. The subjects would be hospital patients with unusual maladies. Keen to help out, Carter agrees, and, two weeks later, he finds himself in the women’s-only “nurse’s room,” performing the delicate task of painting a woman’s diseased breast. Carter “manage[s] tolerably” and finishes in an hour, after which the breast is surgically removed. His next subject is a thigh of unspecified pathology.
Nowhere in his diary do I get the impression that Carter ever imagined he would be bridging medicine and art. True, his father was a working artist and he had grown up drawing and painting, but he had come to London to learn new skills, not brush up on old ones. Asking him to draw was like asking someone who is bilingual to translate—no big deal. However, Hewett, who as a young man had hoped to be a
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