a. and sb. [a. Fr. anatomiste (16th c.), prob. ad. med.L. *anatomista, f. anatomīzā-re: see ANATOMIZE and -IST.]
† A. adj. Anatomic. Obs. rare.
1569. J. Sanford, trans. Agrippa’s Van. Artes, 153. The Anotomist Arte or cuttinge of menne by Phisitions.
B. One who practises, or is skilled in, the art of dissecting bodies, esp. (when no qualifying word is prefixed) the human body.
1594. T. B., trans. La Primaudaye’s Fr. Acad., II. 394. These skinnes which are three in number as some Anatomistes say.
1594. Carew, Huarte’s Exam. Wits, xii. 176. Many Phisitions, learned in the Greke and Latine tongue, and great Anotomists.
1610. Healey, St. Aug., City of God, XXII. xxiv. (1620), 848. Some butcherly Surgeons, (Anatomists, they call them) haue often cut vp dead men.
1658. Cokaine, Poems (1669), 111. The skilfullest Anatomist that yet Vpon an humane body e’re did sit.
1777. Hume, Ess. & Treat., II. 8. The anatomist presents to the eye the most hideous and disagreeable objects.
1863. Kinglake, Crimea (1876), I. xiv. 219. The relations between an anatomist and a corpse.
b. (The adjectives vegetable, comparative, morbid, etc., prefixed to anatomist, define the special department of anatomy in which he is skilled.)
1830. Lyell, Princ. Geol., I. 3. A comparative anatomist may derive some accession of knowledge from the bare inspection of the remains of an extinct quadruped.
1845. Todd & Bowman, Phys. Anat., I. 316. The researches of the morbid anatomist.
2. fig. A dissecter of anything, an analyzer.
1537. Golding, De Mornay, Pref. 9. Interpreters, and Anatomists or Decipherers of nature.
1828. Macaulay, Hallam, Ess. (1851), I. 52. The latter is an anatomist; his task is to dissect the subject … and to lay bare before us all the springs of motion and all the causes of decay.
1848. H. Rogers, Ess., I. vi. 327. So keen an anatomist of human nature.
