Anatomy of the absorbing vessels of the human body

William Cruikshank (1745-1800) established the modern understanding of human lymphatics. William Hunter began this work, but it was Cruikshank who produced the definitive account in 1786, The Anatomy of the Absorbing Vessels of the Human Body. The second edition, published in two volumes in 1790, was 'considerably enlarged,' with additional plates. William Cruikshank was a British chemist and anatomist. In 1771, he became assistant to William Hunter. He then became partner in the Great Windmill Street School, later named the Hunterian Medical School. In 1797, the same year he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, he first demonstrated that a particular crystallizable substance exists in urine and is precipitated from it by nitric acid. In 1800 he identified carbon monoxide as compound containing carbon and oxygen.