William Cheselden was born on October 19, 1688 at Somerby, near Burrow-on-the-Hill, Leicestershire. He worked as an apprentice surgeon at St. Thomas’s Hospital where he fell deeply in love with bones.
By 1711, he was lecturing in anatomy privately and later at St. Thomas’s Hospital, becoming a fully fledged surgeon in 1718. He invented a procedure called lateral lithotomy for removing bladder stones and later on specialised in cataract removal. Cheselden is credited with performing the first known case of full recovery from blindness in 1728, of a blind 13-year-old boy
In 1733, William Chesleden published Osteographia, a grand folio edition depicting human and animal bones. The beautiful book featured copperplate images, playful looking skeletons in odd poses, vignettes, and initials. The work, which was most likely printed for Cheselden by William Bowyer, was unfortunately a financial failure, his bid for subscribers was met “with little success,” which was the case with so many large anatomical atlases of the period.
But, thankfully for us, they are now freely available to stare at. And there are some wonderful pictures within, these are a few of my favourites. (full collection here):
