for diffusing knowledge. His teaching was made impressive by ingenious arguments, apt illustrations, vivid metaphors, and quaint expressions, and was driven home by the simplicity and solemnity with which it was delivered. He thus naturally attracted a large following of students, young and old, who considered him almost infallible, and in doubtful cases were always anxious to hear ‘what Jonathan would say’.
Amongst other outcomes of these labours were the publication of Illustrations of Clinical Surgery (two volumes, folio, 1878–1884), A smaller Atlas of Illustrations of Clinical Surgery (1895), a series of Archives of Surgery (1889–1900) following, at a distance, the German model, and the formation of a large museum. This collection of specimens and drawings was first housed at 1 Park Crescent, London, and was moved in 1889 to the ‘Polyclinic’, a post-graduate medical college in Chenies Street, in which Sir William Broadbent [q.v.] and Dr. Fletcher Little were also greatly interested. Here courses of lectures and demonstrations were given by Hutchinson and others, and gratis consultations on impecunious patients were held in public. These became very popular and were largely attended by general practitioners and others.
Hutchinson was a voluminous writer. His works on syphilis are standard authorities. He promulgated the now generally accepted view that syphilis is a specific fever like small-pox or measles. He will be specially remembered for his observations on the eyes and teeth of sufferers from congenital syphilis; ‘Hutchinson's teeth’ and ‘Hutchinson's eyes’ are terms that have passed into medical language. He also wrote on the pedigree of disease, on leprosy, and on countless other subjects in the medical journals. He was the moving spirit of the New Sydenham Society, which was chiefly occupied in producing at a moderate cost translations of continental monographs on medical subjects.
He had many interests outside his profession. He was an omnivorous reader, and by inheritance and inclination a country man. In his early days he had a small house at Reigate, and when he became prosperous he bought a property at Haslemere to which he added from time to time till it reached 300 acres. Over this he would walk with his gun, and part of it he farmed. Here, with such companions as his lifelong friend and colleague, the learned Hughlings Jackson [q.v.], he studied natural history and geology with the same energy which he devoted to surgery in London. He also established in Haslemere about 1890 at his own expense an ‘educational museum’ of specimens scientifically arranged for methodical instruction and study; this, he hoped, would be a model for similar museums elsewhere. It is extensively used at the present time. Here and at a hall near his own house he gave Saturday and Sunday lectures and demonstrations to his neighbours and guests, on scientific, literary, and religious subjects. He gave a museum arranged on the same lines to his native town, Selby.
Hutchinson's fame does not rest on his achievements in general surgery. He can hardly be placed amongst the pioneers; and he was too early in the field to become identified with the advances in pathology and bacteriology which laid the foundations and raised the structure of modern surgery. He has been described as an indifferent though a successful operator. His special gift was that of observation, and the accumulation and collation of clinical facts. It was impossible to doubt their accuracy, but his deductions from them were not always equally convincing. Thus, having come to the conclusion as early as 1855 that the chief cause of leprosy was the eating of decomposed fish, he did not change his opinion even after the discovery of the lepra bacillus. He held that leprosy was only slightly contagious, and strongly condemned segregation. To corroborate his theory he journeyed to Norway in 1869, South Africa in 1901, and India and Ceylon as late as 1903. In his book Leprosy and Fish-eating (1906) he adds much to our knowledge and exposes many fallacies, but his views did not meet with wide acceptance, though he upheld them stoutly to the last. The book is likely to be of interest to those who hold the simple creed that, given the discovery of a specific micro-organism, there is no need to seek further for the causa causans of a disease.
[Sir Jonathan Hutchinson, by G. N. (Sir George Newman) in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, 1913; obituary notices in the Annual Monitor (Gloucester), 1913, p. 113; Lancet, 28 June 1913; British Medical Journal, 28 June 1913; Ophthalmic Review, vol. xxxii, 1913, p. 225 (by E. Nettleship); private information; personal knowledge.]
HYNDMAN, HENRY MAYERS (1842–1921), socialist leader, the eldest son of John Beckles Hyndman, barrister,
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