William Cheselden

As a teenager William Cheselden was apprenticed to a local Leicestershire surgeon and then at fifteen apprenticed to one at St. Thomas’s Hospital at a point when the institution was known as ‘a hotbed of corruption’. By the age of twenty-two, he had established a course of thirty-five lectures in anatomy, comparative anatomy and physiology; the following year he published his first medical treatise in English and in 1719 was elected a principal surgeon. An immensely talented and careful surgeon with a relatively low mortality rate at less than 10%, he earned fame at home and abroad and in 1727 was appointed surgeon to Queen Caroline.

In 1733 Cheselden published his most celebrated work Osteographia, an atlas of the bones that was the most significant, accurate and beautiful depiction of the human skeleton of its time. Cheselden directed the composition of the plates with the etchings expertly engraved by London engravers Gerard Van der Gucht and Jacob Schijnvoet. The costs of producing the meticulous work were so extraordinary that less than 100 of the 300 first printed were initially sold. Eventually Osteographia would become an essential work for surgical study running to some 39 editions.

In his later years, Cheselden focused on reforming surgical practise particularly as regarded the Barber-Surgeons and in 1744 the company separated. During his time with the new Company of Surgeons, he improved the practice of surgery, the education of surgeons and care of patients in hospitals but it would not be until almost a half century after his death that the Royal College of Surgeons would be created. Through his extraordinary talent and individual endeavour Cheselden was one of the first ‘modern’ surgical pioneers and his Osteographia a testament to both the Art and Science of his time.