390 H IT N T E 11 his mind, which was naturally susceptible, and was rendered the more so by excess of exertion, with repeatedly the additional strain of bodily disease. "I know, I know," said he to Abernethy, "I am but a pigmy in knowledge, yet I feel as a giant when compared with these men." The charges that his language was frequently coarse, and that swearing was with him a habit, as with many of his contemporaries and successors, have been indignantly rebutted by Clift. 1 Leigh Thomas describes the impression left by his first early morning interview with Hunter as "a mingled feeling of pro found respect, surprise, and admiration ; " and by his assistants, pupils, and all with whom he had lived on intimate terms, he was both loved and venerated. His temper, Home states, was very warm and impatient, and when irritated not easily soothed. The hasty but not altogether illogical outburst of Ids anger when refused the post mortem examination of a child, the victim of some obscure malady, in the words, "Then, sir, I heartily hope that yourself and all your family, nay all your friends, may die of the same disease, and that no one may be able to afford any assistance," is in amusing contrast with the acknowledged benevolence of his character. To the kind ness of his disposition, his fondness for animals, his aversion to operations, his thoughtful and self-sacrificing attention to his patients, and especially his zeal to help forward struggling practi tioners and others in any want abundantly testify. " Every man," said he, "should be an economist, for if lie has ever more money than his wants require he can assist the poor." In a letter of his, introducing a patient to his brother William, we read : " He has no money, and you have plenty, so that you are well met." Pecuniary means he valued no further than they enabled him to promote his researches ; and to the poor, to non-beneficed clergymen, professional authors, and artists his services were rendered without remuneration. His yearly income in 1763-74 was never 1000 ; it exceeded that sum in 1778, for several years before his death was 5000, and at the time of that event had reached above 6000. All his earnings not required for domestic expenses were, during the last ten years of his life, devoted to the improvement of his museum ; and his property, this excepted, was found on his decease to be barely suffi cient to pay his debts. By his contemporaries generally Hunter was respected as a master of the art and science of anatomy, and as a cautious and trustworthy if not an elegant or very dexterous opera tor. Few, however, perceived the drift of his biological researches. Although it was admitted, even by Foot, 2 that the idea after which his unique museum had been formed namely, that of morphology as the only true basis of a systematic zoological classification was entirely his own, yet his investigations into the structure of the lower orders of animals were regarded as, after all, works of unpro fitable curiosity. One surgeon, of no inconsiderable repute, is said to have ventured the remark that Mr Hunter s preparations were "just as valuable as so. many pig s pettitoes ; " 3 and the president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks, writing in 1796, plainly expressed his disbelief as to the collection being "an object of im portance to the general study of natural history, or indeed to any branch of science except to that of medicine." It was " without th j solace of sympathy or encouragement of approbation, without collateral assistance," 4 and careless of achieving fame for he held that " no man ever was a great man who wanted to be one" that Hunter laboured to perfect his designs, and established the science of comparative anatomy, and principles which, however neglected in his life-time, became the ground-work of all medical study and teaching. In accordance with the directions given by Hunter in his will, his collection was offered for purchase to the British Government. But the prime minister, Mr Pitt, on being asked to consider the matter, exclaimed : "What ! buy preparations ! Why, I have not money enough to purchase gunpowder." He, however, consented to the bestowal of a portion of the king s bounty for a couple of years on Mrs Hunter and her two surviving children. In 1796 Lord Auckland undertook to urge upon the Government the advisability of acquiring the collection, and on June 13, 1799, parliament voted 15,000 for this purpose. Its custodianship, after refusal by the College of Physicians, was unanimously accepted by the Corporation of Surgeons on the terms proposed. These were in brief that the collection be open four hours in the forenoon, two days every week, for the inspection and consultation of the fellows of the College of Physicians, the members of the Company of Surgeons, and persons properly introduced by them, a catalogue of the preparations and an official to explain it being at those times always at hand ; that a course of not less than twenty-four lectures 5 on comparative anatomy and other subjects illustrated by the collection be given every year by some member of the Company ; and that the preparations be kept in good preservation at the expense of the Corporation, and be subject to the superintendence of a board of sixteen trustees. 6 The fulfil ment of these conditions was rendered possible by the receipt of fees 1 See Lawrence, Hunt. Orat., p. CO. 7 See p. 2GG of his malicious so-culled Life of John Hunter, 1794. 3 Of. J. H. Green, Hunt. Orat., 1840, p. 27. 4 Abernethy. 1 htisiological Lectures, p. 11, 1817. 5 Instituted in 180G. 6 increased to seventeen in 1850 for examinations and diplomas, imder the charter by which, in 1800, the Corporation was constituted the Royal College of Surgeons. A board of curators was in that year appointed by the council of the college to provide for the management of the museum and the pre paration of catalogues. In 1806 the collection was placed in tem porary quarters in Lincoln s Inn Fields, and the sum of 15,000 was voted by parliament for the erection of a proper and commodious building for its preservation and extension. This was followed by a grant of 12,500 in 1807. The collection was removed in 1812 to the new museum, and opened to visitors in 1813. The greater part of the present edifice was built in 1 835, at an expense to the college of about 40,000 ; and the combined Hunterian and collegiate col lections, having been rearranged in what are now termed the western and middle museums, were in 1836 made accessible to the public. The erection of the eastern museum in 1852, on premises in Portugal Street bought in 1S_47 for 16,000, cost 25,000, of which parliament granted 15,000 ; it was opened in 1855. Hunter s collection was estimated to contain 13,682 specimens, iz. , in the physiological department, 3745 in spirit, 965 osteolo- gical, 617 dry, 1968 zoological total 7295 ; and in the patholo gical, 1084 in spirit, 625 dry (including bones), 536 calculi and concretions, 218 monsters and malformations, and 215 microscopic total 2678 ; and 3709 fossils. Since its acquisition by the col lege, it has been greatly increased, notably by presentations from Sir William Blizard (1811) and Sir S. L. Hammick (1851), and by pur chase of specimens in the possession of Sir A. Lever (1806), Messrs Joshua Brookes (1828), Heaviside (1829), Langstaff, South (1835), Howship, Taunton (1841), Listen (1842), and Walker (1843), Sir Astley Cooper (1843), and Dr Barnard Davis (Jan. 1880). The his- tological collection, of which the 215 Hunterian specimens are the nucleus, is the result chiefly of the labours of Professor Quekett, and purchases from Dr Tweedy Todd, Mr Nasmyth, and Professor Lenhossek, and contained in July 1880 upwards of 12,000 speci mens. The library, the formation of which commenced in 1801, consisted in July 1880 of 37,668 vols. , comprising 14,882 separate works, and 39,021 tracts, pamphlets, essays, theses, and reports. 7 Mr William Clift, whom, on February 14, 1792, Hunter received into his house to train, as an assistant in his museum, 8 had the ex clusive charge of the collection from the date of its owner s death to that of its purchase by the state. During this period, with two gallons of spirit meted out occasionally, and the pittance of 7s. a week for his own support out of the limited funds at the disposal of Hunter s executors, he contrived to maintain the whole in good condition. He was conservator of the museum, as stated on the pedestal of his bust there, from 1800 to 1849. From 1825 to 1832 he was assisted by his son, William Home Clift. Professor Richard Owen held the office of assistant-conservator in 1832-35, and of con servator in 1836-55, and Professor J. T. Quekett that of assistant- conservator in 1843-51, and of conservator from 1852 till his death in 1861, when he was succeeded by Professor William Henry Flower. The scope of Hunter s labours may be denned as the explication of the various phases of life exhibited in organized structures, both animal and vegetable, from the simplest to the most highly differen tiated. By him, therefore, comparative anatomy was employed, not in subservience to the classification of living forms, as by Cuvier, but as a means of gaining insight into the principle animating and producing these forms, by virtue of which he perceived that, how ever different in form and faculty, they were all allied to himself. In what does life consist ? is a question which in his writings he frequently considers, and which seems to have been ever present in his mind. Life, he taught, was a principle independent of struc ture, 9 most tenaciously held by the least highly organized 1 icings, but capable of readier destruction as a whole, as, e.g., by deprivation of heat or by pain, in young than in old animals. In life he beheld an agency working under the control of law, and exercising its functions in various modes and degrees. He perceived it, as Abernethy observes, to be "a great chemist," a power capable of manufacturing a variety of substances into one kind of generally distributed nutriment, and of furnishing from this a still greater variety of dissimilar substances. Like Harvey, who terms it the aniina vcgdiva, he regarded it as a principle of self-preservation, which keeps the body from dissolution. Life is shown, said lie, in renovation and action ; but, although facilitated^ in its working by mechanical causes, it can exist without action, as in an egg new-laid or undergoing incubation. It is not simply a regulator of tempera ture ; it is a principle which resists cold, conferring on the struc tures which it endows the capacity of passing some degrees below the freezing-point of ordinary inanimate matter without suffering congelation. Hunter found, in short, that there exists in animals a latent heat of life, set free in the process of death (see Treatise on 7 CaJendar of the Royal College of Surgeons, July 8, 1880. 8 See Sir Benj. C. Brodie, "Autobiography," Works, ed. C. Hawkins, i. 41, 1865. 9 How clearly he held this view is seen in his nniark (Treatise on the Blood, p. 28, cf. p. 46) that, as the coagulating lymph of the blood is probably com mon to all animals, whereas the red corpuscles are rot, we must suppose the lymph to be the essential part of that fluid. Hunter was the first to discover that the blood of the embryos of red-blooded animals is at first colourless, re
sembling -that of invertibiates. (See Owen, Preface to vol. iv. of Works, p. xiii.)
