Charles Mayo Goss (February 16, 1899 – March 17, 1981) was an American anatomist, classicist, medical researcher, professor, editor, and educator. He is best known as the editor of five American editions of Gray's Anatomy. Goss was professor and chairman of the Department of Anatomy at the University of Alabama and at Louisiana State University Medical School. He published approximately 130 papers during his lifetime and specialized in the area of mammalian cardiac embryology.

Early life and education Goss was born in Peoria, Illinois, to a father who was a grocer and a mother who came from a family of farmers. He attended Franklin School, later enrolling at Bradley Polytechnic Institute, where he received a classical education, learning Latin, Greek, German, and French. He then set off to Yale University, where he received an AB (1921) and then Yale School of Medicine, where he earned an MD (1926).

Medical career Goss began a career in academia, first teaching anatomy at Yale for several years (1926–1929), then at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University (1929–1938), the University of Alabama (1938–1947), Louisiana State University Medical School (1947–1965), George Washington University Medical School (1966–1975), and the University of South Alabama at Mobile (1975–1981). His background as a classical scholar led him to publish new translations of Galen, bringing about a new understanding of the ancient Greek anatomist. He also was active with the American Association of Anatomists and was the editor of The Anatomical Record.

Posthumous dispute Decades after his death, Goss received renewed attention for his revisions of the 25th edition of Gray's Anatomy in 1948, in which he was said to have removed an illustration of the clitoris, a diagram of which first appeared in the 12th edition (1901). Various scholars have come up with competing explanations for the revisions. Academic anatomist and medical educator Joel A. Vilensky debunked these claims in his journal article "Clitoral Anatomy in the Feminist Literature" (2022). Vilensky argues that the entire idea that anatomists attempted to remove or downplay the clitoris from the medical literature is based on bias and misunderstanding. Vilensky traces the origin of the claim to a 1995 article by Lisa Jean Moore and Adele E. Clarke in the journal Feminist Studies.

See also List of Guggenheim Fellowships awarded in 1956

Notes

Selected work Gray's Anatomy

Other work

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