The stormy life of one of the most colorful and complex characters in early 19th-century medicine

"There are, and doubtless always have been, men who are like Staffordshire bull-terriers. Wherever they go they pick a fight. Granville Sharp Pattison (1791-1851), anatomist, surgeon, and inveterate quarreler, was just such a man whose fights and largely self-inflicted troubles were unusually flamboyant. . . . Grave-robbing, aggressiveness, insubordination, brutal surgery, and adultery forced him to leave Glasgow and flee to Philadelphia where he was soon quarrelling with his university colleagues, and making a fool of himself. . . . Pattison was often described as a charming, handsome, and attractive man. A competent anatomist and a brilliant lecturer, he was kind to his students while at the same time displaying a belligerence, obstinacy, and quickness to take offense that made him an impossible colleague. He was in short a complex character. . . Yet it is often true that the lives of the obscure and unsuccessful, with their catalogs of struggles, disappointments, quarrels, and failures, provide the richest historical detail. This book is a splendid example. Pattison has not only written an entertaining account, the book as a whole ranks amongst the very best medical biographies."

—Lancet

"Dr. F. L. M. Pattison has recounted the story of his great-great-great uncle with admirable objectivity and real insight into the ways of 19th century medicine."

—Times Literary Supplement