William Bromfield. Coloured engraving by D. Orme, 1792, after R. Cosway.

William Bromfield was an example of a successful English surgeon and a skilful anatomist who never went to a university. Training in surgery up to the nineteenth century was by apprenticeship: Bromfield was apprenticed to the surgeon John Ranby. Bromfield owed much of his success to his stylish and debonair character, which brought him royal appointments: he was surgeon to Prince Frederick in 1745 and to the queen's household in 1769, and was portrayed in this print by the Regency celebrity artist Richard Cosway. He was also an anatomist, and demonstrator of anatomy at the dissections held at Barber Surgeons' Hall in the City of London. It is in the role of anatomist that Cosway portrays him, exploring the cavities of the heart with a probe, and looking away to think about what he has found -- perhaps the emotional and human consequences of the anatomy of the heart, as well as the purely physical