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A mesmerizing forensic thriller that thrusts the reader into the operating rooms, drawing rooms, and back alleys of 1889 Philadelphia, as a young doctor grapples with the principles of scientific process to track a daring killer

In the morgue of a Philadelphia hospital, a group of physicians open a coffin and uncover the corpse of a beautiful young woman. What they see takes their breath away. Within days, one of them strongly suspects that he knows the woman’s identity…and the horrifying events that led to her death. But in this richly atmospheric novel–an ingenious blend of history, suspense and early forensic science–the most compelling chapter is yet to come, as young Ephraim Carroll is plunged into a maze of murder, secrets and unimaginable crimes....

Dr. Ephraim Carroll came to Philadelphia to study with a leading professor, the brilliant William Osler, believing that he would gain the power to save countless lives. As America hurtles toward a new century, medicine is changing rapidly, in part due to the legalization of autopsy–a crime only a few years before. But Carroll and his mentor are at odds over what they glimpsed that morning in the hospital’s Dead House. And when a second mysterious death is determined to have been a ruthless murder, Carroll can feel the darkness gathering around him–and he ignites an investigation of his own.

Soon he is moving between the realm of elite medicine, Philadelphia high society, and a teeming badlands of criminality and sexual depravity along the city’s fetid waterfront. With a wealthy, seductive woman clouding his vision, the controversial artist Thomas Eakins sowing scandal, and the secrets of the nation’s powerful surgeons unraveling around him, Carroll is forced to confront an agonizing moral choice–between exposing a killer, undoing a wrong, and, quite possibly, protecting the future of medicine itself…..
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"O my America, my new-found-land!" Mateo Renaldo Colombo (or Columbus, to give him his English name) might have written in his De re anatomica."

It is no accident that Federico Andahazi draws a parallel between his Renaissance hero, the anatomist Mateo Colombo, and the explorer Christopher Columbus. It is the conceit of his first novel, The Anatomist (beautifully translated from the Spanish by Alberto Manguel), that both Colombos made "equally momentous and disturbing" discoveries. Every schoolchild can tell you what Columbus's was; less well known, perhaps, is that of his countryman and fellow "explorer." "Mateo's America is less distant and infinitely smaller than Christopher's; in fact, it's not much larger than the head of a nail." In short, Mateo Renaldo Colombo discovered the Amor Veneris, the clitoris.

Andahazi makes much of this discovery, not to mention its discoverer: "The discovery of Mateo Colombo's America was, all things considered, an epic counterpointed by an elegy. Mateo Colombo was as fierce and heartless as Christopher. Like Christopher (to use an appropriate metaphor) he was a brutal colonizer who claimed for himself all rights to the discovered land, the female body." Certainly women readers will view this description with at least as much irony as Native Americans regard that other Columbus's "discovery" of a land they had known about all along.

The Anatomist is based on a historical figure and historical fact; what Andahazi provides is his title character's heart and soul. The fictional Colombo is driven by desire for the high-priced courtesan Mona Sofia. Though Mateo adores her, the heartless Sofia regards him as nothing more than a paying customer. After breaking both his heart and his bank account over her, Colombo returns to his native Padua whence he is eventually called to Florence to treat a saintly young widow, Inés de Torremolinos. Inés is "infinitely beautiful," and her illness is "far from common." While examining her, he discovers "between his patient's legs a perfectly formed, erect and diminutive penis." Land ho.

Though Colombo's "discovery," first in Inés and then in other women, offers plenty of opportunity for eroticism, the most compelling aspect of The Anatomist lies in the Church's reaction to De re anatomica, the book Colombo writes detailing his find. The Renaissance may well have signaled the birth of new art, science, and philosophy, but it was also the age of Inquisition--and Colombo's unfolding of "the key to the heart of all women ... the anatomical cause of love" soon lands him in prison on charges of heresy and Satanism. The trial, Mateo's defense, and the surprising aftermath make for provocative reading and raise The Anatomist above the level of the merely erotic to a more intriguing philosophical plane, one that is sure to prompt a lively discussion or two. --Alix Wilber.
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If they want to truly learn about the human body, London medical students Edward Montague and Jean-Claude Legard have no choice but to become common criminals The authorities have long looked the other way as budding anatomists dug up fresh graves. But Edward and Jean-Claude still greet the task of defiling the final resting place of Abigail Darcy with unease, especially when they discover that the cadaver stolen from the graveyard is not the late Mrs. Darcy but a man—and that he's been murdered!

Utterly baffled and seeking justice, Edward and Jean-Claude begin an investigation into Mrs. Darcy's life and death, hoping to find out how a young man met his terrible fate and ended his days in her coffin. It's a search that leads to adultery, betrayal, and more than one suspicious death—and a final, paralyzing encounter with a cold-blooded killer.

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Santiago Ramón y Cajal (1852-1934) made prolific and lasting contributions to understanding "the life of the infinitely small." Widely thought of as the founder of neuroscience, Cajal made remarkable explorations into the organization and function of the nervous system. His work is still referred to more than that of any other scientist in the field.

W. Maxwell Cowan's foreword to this edition conveys the excitement and energy of Cajal's life and endeavors, the liveliness and flamboyance of his engagements with the microscope. Cowan surveys Cajal's salient discoveries, noting that almost every important conceptual issue in neurobiology was foreshadowed in Cajal's work: the initial description of the climbing fibers of the cerebellum, the discovery of the growth cone, the concept of the "dynamic polarity" of the neurom an anticipation of the later discovery of axonal transport, and the prediction that new synapses may be formed throughout life to serve as a physical basis for learning and memory.

W. Maxwell Cowen is Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute..
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Many structures in the human body are named after Johannes Muller, one of the most respected anatomists and physiologists of the 19th century Muller taught many of the leading scientists of his age, many of whom would go on to make trail-blazing discoveries of their own. Among them were Theodor Schwann, who demonstrated that all animals are made of cells; Hermann Helmholtz, who measured the velocity of nerve impulses; and Rudolf Virchow, who convinced doctors to think of disease at the cellular level. This book tells Muller's story by interweaving it with those of seven of his most famous students.
Muller suffered from depression and insomnia at the same time as he was doing his most important scientific work, and may have committed suicide at age 56. Like Muller, his most prominent students faced personal and social challenges as they practiced cutting-edge science. Virchow was fired for his political activism, Jakob Henle was jailed for membership in a dueling society, and Robert Remak was barred from Prussian universities for refusing to renounce his Orthodox Judaism. By recounting these stories, Muller's Lab explores the ways in which personal life can affect scientists' professional choices, and consequently affect the great discoveries they make..
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Dr. J.C. Boileau Grant graduated from Edinburgh University in 1908. At the outbreak of war he volunteered for the Royal Army Medical Corps and served in the Grenadier Guards and the Black Watch. After demobilization in 1919 he accepted the invitation from the University of Manitoba to the Chair of Anatomy, which he occupied until 1930 when he went to Toronto as Professor of Anatomy. By then he had written his first textbook and had the first edition of the Atlas of Anatomy in progress, both of which brought him international recognition. The museum of anatomical specimens which he and his students had created in Toronto remains to this day a superb resource for the teaching of anatomy. He ended his academic career as Visiting Professor, UCLA, where the students voted him the Most Valuable Teacher award. Impeccable scholarship, quirky humour and, behind the mask of old-fashioned politeness and reserve, a warm friendliness ensure Grant's immortality in the annals of Canadian medicine..
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