Henry Gray, author of famous anatomy text, may have been big fat cheat

The history of Gray's famous text may reveal the anatomy of a jerk. (credit: Public Domain)

Gray’s Anatomy is easily recognized worldwide as one of the most revered and influential medical texts of all time. But a closer examination of its medical history turns up tales of a disgraceful birth, and hints that its author, Henry Gray, may have been a bit of a fraudster.

Henry Gray, author of Gray's Anatomy (credit: H. Pollock)

Notes, publications, and diary entries from Gray’s colleagues suggest that the famous author may have plagiarized numerous passages of the text, and was pushy, cut-throat, and resented, a new commentary piece in the journal Clinical Anatomy argues. While the allegations are not new, one researcher claims to have fresh data that refutes them, urging a renewed dissection of Gray’s character and actions.

The commentary’s author, Ruth Richardson, a medical historian and visiting scholar at King’s College London, wrote about Gray’s alleged cheating ways in her 2008 book, The Making of Mr. Gray’s Anatomy. But in a 2014 scientific conference, anatomy professor Brion Benninger, of the College of Osteopathic Medicine of the Pacific – Northwest, publicly announced that he and a colleague had carried out a computer analysis of the text and found no such evidence of plagiarism. He said that he intended to publish the analysis. But, in the year since, he has not produced any data.

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