Cheselden, William (1688–1752)

English anatomist and surgeon. He studied anatomy in London (1666–1709) and in 1711 himself began to give lectures on the subject. In 1713 he published Anatomy of the Human Body, long the standard book on the subject, and in 1733 Osteographia, or the Anatomy of the Bones. Cheselden was surgeon at St Thomas's, St George's, and Westminster hospitals. He was a surgeon of great skill; the lateral operation for lithotomy (removal of a stone in the bladder) as it is now practised, was his invention.

Cheselden was born in Somerby, Leicestershire, England. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1712, and published a series of papers, one of which recounted the sensations of a boy of 14 on recovering his sight when Cheselden formed an artificial pupil in his eye after he had been blind from infancy.