He studied the development of the endocrine glands and spleen and in 1853 was appointed Lecturer on Anatomy at St George's Hospital Medical School in London.

In 1855, he approached his colleague Henry Vandyke Carter with his idea to produce an inexpensive and accessible anatomy textbook for medical students.

Dissecting unclaimed bodies from workhouse and hospital mortuaries through the Anatomy Act 1832, the two worked for 18 months on what would form the basis of the book.

This increased to a three-year gap for the 18th and 19th editions, leading to the 1913 publication of the New American from the Eighteenth English, which brought the numbering back into line.

[9][14] The current editions also contain histology, embryology, and pathology subjects that complements anatomical knowledge.

The more popular[clarification needed] 41st edition of Gray's Anatomy was published on 25 September 2015 by Elsevier in both print and online versions, and is the first edition to have enhanced online content including anatomical videos and a bonus Gray's imaging library.

The 41st edition also has 24 specially invited online commentaries on contemporary anatomical topics such as advances in electron and fluorescent microscopy; the neurovascular bundles of the prostate; stem cells in regenerative medicine; the anatomy of facial aging; and technical aspects and applications of diagnostic radiology.

The editors of the 39th edition acknowledged the validity of both approaches but switched to regional anatomy by popular demand.

For many decades however, precisely because Gray's textbook became such a classic, successive editors made major efforts to preserve its position as possibly the most authoritative text on the subject in English.

Toward this end, a long-term strategy appears to have been to make each edition come close to containing a fully comprehensive account of the anatomical medical understanding available at the time of publication.

[citation needed] The explosion of medical knowledge in the 20th century led to a vast expansion of the book, which threatened to collapse under its own weight metaphorically and physically.

From the 35th edition onward, increased efforts were made to reverse this trend and keep the book readable by students.

Newer editions of Gray's Anatomy – and even several recent older ones – are still considered to be the most comprehensive and detailed textbooks on the subject.