The Anatomist: A True Story of Gray's Anatomy (22 page)

Upon receiving his first copy of the
Anatomy
in mid-October 1858 (the book had been sent not by Henry Gray or the publisher but, oddly, by his onetime boss at the Royal College of Surgeons, dear old Mr. Queckett), Carter’s only words are: “The Book is out and looks well.”
Well.
It’s a muted response, to say the least. His silence makes me think he paged through it once, then put the book up on a shelf, literally and figuratively, as though it represented one long, unpleasant chapter that he just wanted to put behind him. Which could very well have been the case. In only six months, H. V. Carter’s life had changed utterly.

Though he’d had to pay for his own passage to India, Carter was officially an enlisted man. He had obtained an appointment with the Indian Medical Service, the medical corps of the British-controlled Indian Army, which, at the time, provided personnel for both civilian and military posts. Immediately upon his arrival, Carter reported to Fort George, an army post outside Bombay, where he helped treat soldiers wounded in the mutiny. Before he could even learn the ropes, though, he was assigned to an artillery unit stationed in Mhow, a city in central India, 350 miles (563 kilometers) and a ten-day trip away. But no sooner had he arrived in Mhow than the military action had moved on and he was once again reassigned. This time, he was instructed to turn around and make the long journey back to Bombay, though this was complicated by troops, moving in the opposite direction, receiving transport priority. When finally allowed to leave Mhow, he ended up riding solo on a “bullock train,” an oxen-driven cart. “Not much danger,” he noted, “but most men on road armed,” and to his astonishment, a leopard and other exotic animals boldly crossed their path. In a certain way, this was exactly what he had signed up for—an adventure worthy of Bellot—yet he could not get back to Bombay fast enough. The job awaiting him there was, as he put it with unalloyed joy, “The very thing I had wished for!” He had been appointed the anatomy professor–cum–Anatomy Museum curator at the newly established medical school for Indian students, Grant Medical College, as well as being named a staff surgeon at its affiliated hospital—positions that would instantly grant him the elevated status he craved. In other words, Henry Vandyke Carter was about to become, for all intents and purposes, a Bombay Henry Gray.

RETRACING CARTER’S EARLY
steps in India is relatively easy. From the moment he disembarked in Bombay, he recorded his every movement, as though he’d placed himself under surveillance. On his trip to Mhow, he even charted the number of miles covered, day by day, village to village. Still, his words take one only so far. Typical for a diarist, he stints on atmosphere, which is a shame because, in those rare instances when he is moved to do so, Carter’s diary writing can be transporting. Three days before he is to give his first anatomy lecture to his Indian students, for instance, he finds himself in a sanguine mood and takes a moment to capture the beauty of the day. “Though the monsoon [season] has begun,” he writes on June 28, 1858, “the view and prospect from these quarters of Fort George towards the harbour [is] pleasant and lively. All shines outside, and the splendid home-ships ride at anchor like seated queens.” In a rush of images, he describes “all those little details which serve to complete a picture”: the “simple native boats…the passing clouds and towering hills, and variety of light and shade,” and in the foreground, “the small unfinished native pier, bit of beach, and timber-logs of palms.”

Somewhere between these sentences, he has an epiphany. “Truly, there is some pleasure to be found in such scenes,” he writes, “and at these times when Nature shews her peaceful and smiling face. Why not then rise to the contemplation of Nature’s Lord and Maker?” Indeed, why not? Though this day was Sunday, he had not attended church, and yet here, by simply taking in the view from a window, he felt the Lord God’s presence. “At last His mercy and goodness are revealed to my dull vision. At last I have found Him.” Completing the picture that Carter has painted is my image of him, propped against the sill, writing, happy.

Actual images of Carter are rare. Only two are known to survive, both showing him as an elderly man. So on our second day in London, Steve and I decide to play out a hunch. We visit the British Library to see what is described in the catalog as an “Album of views of ‘The Grant Medical College and Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy Hospital, Bombay.’” The photo album, containing forty large vintage platinum prints, is among the library’s vast holdings of material related to the British rule of India. While the photographer is unknown and the dates uncertain, what makes the album sound so promising is that it contains views not only of the buildings but also of the staff. Could we match his name to an unidentified face?

Getting permission to see the album, however, requires an interrogation of sorts, as the BL is very selective about who is (and who is not) permitted access to its historical collections. After completing a detailed application, you have to queue up, then go through the equivalent of a job interview, which sounds a little nerve-racking and, frankly, more time-consuming than we had expected. Is an old photo album worth all this trouble?

Grant Medical College, Bombay, c. 1905

Curiosity keeps us in the queue. We pass muster in our separate interviews. And by midafternoon, Steve and I are being admitted to the Oriental and India Office Collections reading room, the kind of place for which the phrase
inner sanctum
was coined. Everything about the room, from the tasteful furnishings and hushed atmosphere to the tweed-jacket-wearing patrons, screams
scholarly
—in the quietest, English-accented voice, of course.

More waiting ensues, as the requested album has to be procured, but soon we are ushered into a small, climate-controlled viewing room. We take a seat as Helen the librarian places a large archival box before us. Helen returns to her post at the door.

With the first pictures, our patience is rewarded. Here is one extraordinary, richly detailed picture after another—the college’s grounds, the “J.J.” hospital, the operating theater, the dissecting room, and other sites, all of which appear as dramatically different from St. George’s as Bombay is from London. Even the cadavers look different, being dark-skinned rather than ghostly white. In one photo, we can practically feel the tropical heat of Bombay. These are museum-quality prints, wonderful to see and perfect in every way except one: Carter is definitely not in them. The photos were taken too late.

Students of anatomy, Grant Medical College, c. 1905

Regrouping back in the reading room, with only a couple of hours before closing, Steve and I request the library’s one other item specifically related to Grant Medical College: a series of annual reports from the latter half of the nineteenth century. I feel as if we are scraping the bottom of the research barrel here. Having written annual reports myself, I think of them as little more than pro forma, ghostwritten exercises in community relations. But as Steve points out, aren’t annual reports always filled with pictures?

Well, these aren’t—not a single photo to speak of—though they are filled with enough facts and financial statements to qualify them as standard specimens of the genre. But one of them does contain something I had never expected. In the report for academic year 1859-60, Carter himself submitted a tidy overview of the Anatomy Department. Sounding appropriately officious, he began with the requisite statistics (one hundred lectures had been provided, thirty-three weekly exams, et cetera); followed with a tart review of the twenty-two anatomy students’ work in the dissecting room (“satisfactory,” though, in general, “their assiduity and zeal” lessened noticeably toward year’s end); and closed with a note about how the course had been organized. “The order of subjects in descriptive anatomy has been generally conformed to that of the textbook, Quain’s, or [a new one] which is becoming a favourite book with students,
Gray’s Anatomy,
and without vanity I may say that the figures in the latter work are calculated to greatly assist students.”

Blink and you’ll miss it. I might have myself, had Steve not read ahead and put his finger right on it—

“There’s your answer,” he whispers, pointing to Carter’s final sentence.

And sure enough, that
is
the answer to how Carter truly felt about
Gray’s Anatomy.
He hadn’t shelved the book; he was using it. He was proud of it. And he was clearly pleased to see it “becoming a favourite” with students. I am sure it pleased him, too, to see the footnote added to his report by the school’s principal: “
Dr. Carter is the author of the beautiful plates by which
Gray’s Anatomy
is illustrated.
”

Along with this unexpected find comes a thorny narrative dilemma. This is where I want to stop the story. Here is where I want to leave H. V. Carter, with a happy ending: at age twenty-nine, having found fulfilling work and having finally found that God is always present in the beauty of the world around him. Fade out on Professor Carter in the Grant Medical College dissecting room surrounded by bright young Indian students as Steve and I exit this beautiful library.

But I can’t, for I know that a very messy chain of events has already been set in motion. It started in a seemingly innocent way when Carter took four days’ leave in the town of Khandalla, a trip he mentioned only in passing in an entry from mid-May 1859. After this, however, he did not write a single entry until two and a half years later, by which point he had much to get off his chest. That’s all I will say for now, though. Apart from adding clarifying facts and the occasional word to assist the flow of language, I am not needed here. This is H. V. Carter’s story to tell.

“
LAST DATE, I
noted a short trip to Khandalla,” he recaps in the November 1861 entry. He then continues.

There I met a young woman passing as the wife of an officer in the 89th Regiment (Capt. Barnes Robinson, a young man of not much over 24 years)—with whom I fell into conversation. Lady-like, very lively and agreeable, though she was sick. She made a transitory impression. Returning to Bombay, while living at Fort George, I occasionally visited my namesake Surgeon Carter; there I saw her again
—

“Surgeon Carter” is Henry John Carter [or, “C.”], 1813—95 (no relation to H.V.), a professor of ophthalmic surgery at Grant Medical College. The senior Carter’s interest in the young woman piqued H. V. Carter’s.

This is when I learnt the real state of things—she was recently divorced at the Cape and not married to Capt. Robinson
[“R.”].
She had come over to join R. but…he had been suddenly sent off up country. He sent her money at long intervals and she was really in want. She had a long and severe illness—acute dysentery—and occupied rooms opposite to mine, for I had taken up quarters at Hope Hall Hotel
[where the other Dr. Carter also lived]
during the monsoon. Naturally, I sympathized with her condition, without communicating with her, but Carter and self were constantly talking of her. He was greatly taken up with the subject and attended to her health along with Dr. Leith and was kind to the little boy she had with her
—