HUNTER 385 HUNTER, JOHN (1728-1793), as physiologist and surgeon combined, unrivalled in the annals of medicine, born February 13, 1 1728, at Long Calderwood, in the parish of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, was the youngest of the ten children of John and Agnes Hunter. His father, who died October 30, 174l, 2 aged 78, was descended from the old Ayrshire family of Hunter of Hunterston, and his mother was the daughter of a Mr Paul, treasurer of Glas gow. Hunter is said to have made but little progress at school, being averse to its restraints and pursuits, and fond of country amusements. When seventeen years old he repaired to Glasgow, where he for a short time assisted his brother-in law, Mr Buchanan, a cabinetmaker, who had involved himself in pecuniary difficulties. Being desirous at length of some settled occupation, he obtained from his brother William permission to aid, under Mr Symonds, in making dissections in his anatomical school, then the most celebrated in London, intending, should he be unsuccessful there, to enter the army. He arrived accordingly in the metropolis in September 1748, about a fortnight before the commencement of his brother s autumnal course of lectures. After succeeding beyond expectation with the dissection of the muscles of an arm, he was entrusted with a similar part injected, and from the excellence of his second essay Dr Hunter predicted that he would become a good anatomist. Seemingly John Hunter had hitherto received no instruction in preparation for the special course of life upon which he had entered. His brother, with whom he was now inti mately associated, was one of the most brilliant exponents of medical science, and enjoyed the society of the best cul tured men of the age ; but that it was through this circum stance that, as stated by R. A. Stafford, 3 " he was taught to think," and that his mind, as has been surmised, had pre vious to his coming to London been " idle, heedless, and aimless," can hardly be concluded in the face of what the future revealed of the practical and inquiring turn and the originality of his mental disposition. Rather we may assume, with B. B. Cooper, 4 that Hunter was naturally gifted with powers of mind which rendered him to some extent in dependent of the training required by less extraordinary intellects. Dr J. Ridge, 5 speaking of Hunter s permitted truancy from the grammar school, argues that early tuition and attainments, at least of the kind imparted, being in consistent with a natural education of the senses, are not favourable to the production of extraordinary genius. Hunter s power of estimating what was worth doing, and what could be done, is by Dr Moxon 6 ascribed in part to his being " a man who had a free youth, not over-taught, nor over-strained ; " and, if it be true that " the early part of life, the school-time, has long been spent, and is spent, in pursuits which minister but little to the culture of the mind, or to the communication and reception of knowledge useful to any class of society in proportion to the time consumed," 7 it is possible that his dislike to scholastic exercises may have served to protect Hunter from influences opposed to that very endowment which made him pre eminent as a teacher, namely, the power of perceiving the relation of numerous individual facts as illustrations of general principles. 1 The date is thus entered in the parish register, see Adams, Memoirs, Appendix, p. 203. The Hunterian Oration, instituted in 1813 by Dr Baillie and Sir Everard Home, is delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons on the 14th of February, which Hunter used to give as the anniversary of his birth. 2 Ottley s date, 1738, is inaccurate, see Simmons, Account of . . . W. Hunter, p. 7. Hunter s mother died Nov. 3, 1751, aged 66. 3 limit. Orat., 1851, p. 6. * Hunt. Orat., 1853, p. 7. 5 Observations on tlie Life, Disease, and Death of J. Hunter, p. 19, 1855. 8 See Oration before Hunteriun Society, Med. Times and Gazette, March 1877, p. 224. 7 R. Quain, Hunt. Orat., 1869, p. 19. Hard-working, and singularly patient and skilful in dissection, Hunter had by his second winter in London acquired sufficient anatomical knowledge to be entrusted with the charge of his brother s practical class, with the members of which, as also with the resurrection men, he was a universal favourite. In the summer months of 1749-50, at Chelsea Military Hospital, he attended the lectures and operations of Cheselden, on whose retirement in the following year he became a surgeon s pupil at St Bartholomew s, where Pott was one of the senior surgeons. In the summer of 1752 he visited Scotland. Home and, following him, Ottley state that Hunter began in 1754 to assist his brother as his partner in lecturing ; according, however, to the European Magazine for 1782, the office of lecturer was offered to Hunter by his brother in 1758, but declined by him on account of the "insuperable embarrass- ments and objections " which he felt to speaking in public. In 1754 he became a surgeon s pupil at St George s Hos pital, where he was appointed house-surgeon in 1756. 8 During the period of his connexion with Dr Hunter s school he, in addition to other labours, solved the problem of the descent of the testis in the foetus, traced the ramifications of the nasal and olfactory nerves within the nose, experiment ally tested the question whetherveins could act as absorbents, studied the formation of pus, and the nature of the placenta! circulation, and with his brother earned the chief merit of practically proving the function and importance of the lymphatics in the animal economy. On June 5, 1755, 9 he was induced to enter as a gentleman commoner at St Mary s Hall, Oxford, but his true instincts would not permit him, to use his own expression, "to stuff Latin and Greek at the university." Some three and thirty years later he thus significantly wrote of an opponent: "Jesse Foot accuses me of not understanding the dead languages ; but I could teach him that on the dead body which he never knew in any language dead or living." 10 Doubtless, however, linguistic studies would have served to correct in him what was perhaps a natural defect a difficulty in the presenta tion of abstract ideas which was not wholly attributable to the novelty of his doctrines. An attack of inflammation of the lungs in the spring of 1759, apparently caused by overwork, having produced symptoms threatening consumption, by which the promis ing medical career of his brother James had been cut short, Hunter, with a view to residence abroad for a season, obtained from Mr Adair in October 1760 the appointment of staff-surgeon in Hodgson and Keppel s expedition to Belleisle. With this he sailed in 1761. In the following year he served with the English forces on the frontier of Portugal. Whilst with the army he acquired the extensive knowledge of gunshot wounds embodied in his important treatise on that subject, published in 1794, in which, amongst other matters of moment, he insists on the rejec tion of the indiscriminate practice of dilating with the knife followed almost universally by surgeons of his time. When not engaged in the active duties of his profession, he occupied himself with physiological and other scientific researches. Thus, in 1761, off Belleisle, the conditions of 8 So in Home s Life, p. xvi., and Ottley s, p. 15. Hunter himself (Treatise on the Blood, p. 62) mentions the date 1755. 9 Ottley incorrectly gives 1753 as the date. In tl e buttery book for 1755 at St Mary s Hall his admission is thus noted : " Die Junii 5* 1755 Admissus est Johannes Hunter superioris ordinis Commen- salis." Hunter apparently left Oxford after less than two months residence, as the last entry in the buttery book with charges for battels against his name is on July 25, 1755. His name was, how ever, retained on the books of the Hall till December 10, 1756. The writer is indebted to Dr John Griffiths, Keeper of the Archives, Ox ford University, for the following record of Hunter s matriculation : "Ter Trin. 1755. Junii 5 to Aul. S. Mar. Johannes Hunter 24 Johannis de Kilbride in Com. Clidesdale Scotife Arm. fil. " 10 Ottley, Life of J. Hunter, p. 22.
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