Edward Tuson was a precocious young medic of only 22, when he published his greatest and best-known work, ‘Myology’, for the first time in 1825. The importance of Tuson’s published works can “scarcely be estimated by the student of the present generation, for subjects for dissection were only to be obtained at the private schools through the agency of the resurrection men. Such superposed anatomical plates were in constant use throughout Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, both by artists and medical students” (RCS online).



After qualifying from the Middlesex Hospital in 1826, Edward William Tuson (1802-1865)  began to “lecture on anatomy on his own account. His lectures were given in a room in the Gerrard Street Dispensary, Soho. It was a small beginning, and he was proud when he had, as he thought, perfected his first pupil in anatomy... This was in 1826 before the reform of the College Examination system, and only a few years after Cruikshank had published his mordantly satiric drawing entitled ‘An Examination at the College’, in which a deaf examiner asks a student to describe the organs of hearing through an ear-trumpet... On February 28th, 1833, Tuson was elected Assistant Surgeon at the Middlesex Hospital, beating Benjamin Phillips and Alexander Shaw by a small majority. On June 2nd, 1836, he was elected to the office of Surgeon in succession to Sir Charles Bell, resigned. On the formation of the Medical School at the Middlesex Hospital, Tuson joined it and brought over to it his own pupils, thus materially contributing to its success” (RCS online).



[WITH]: TUSON, Edward William. ‘Supplement to Myology; containing the Arteries, Veins, Nerves, and Lymphatics of the Human Body, the Abdominal & Thoracic Viscera, the ear and eye, the Brain, and the Gravid Uterus, with the Foetal Circulation’. London, Published by Callow and Wilson, Medical Booksellers, 16, Princes Street, Soho, 1828. Folio (535 by 330mm). Nine lithographed plates with numerous hinged lithographed overslips, with contemporary hand-colour in part; modern brown cloth-backed blue paper boards, original publisher’s printed label on the front cover.



[AND]: TUSON, Edward William. ‘Anatomy and Physiology. Mr. E.W. Tuson delivers Three Courses of Lectures on Anatomy, Physiology, and Pathology, during the year each course commencing the First Monday in October, February, and June, at half-past two o’clock, daily’. Broadside, printed on recto only. Although it is not stated exactly where these lectures will take place, prospective pupils may apply to Tuson at his residence in Fitzroy Square, or at Callow & Wilson’s Medical Library, in Soho.