_WILLIAM AND JOHN HUNTER AND THE APPLICATIONS OF ANATOMY AND
PHYSIOLOGY TO SURGERY._
It is somewhat surprising that anatomy, the necessary basis of a
sound treatment of the human body in disease, should have so long
remained comparatively uncultivated in this country as a practical
art, after Harvey had led the way and shown how brilliant discoveries
might be made by dissection. Continental schools certainly put to
shame early English efforts in anatomy: and it would appear not easy
to establish in England any new study, unless the subject is one from
which large pecuniary profits may immediately be anticipated—in which
enterprise there can be no sort of merit. When a man has attained
some reputation as an anatomist or physiologist, all the efforts of
British society seem to be directed towards taking him away from that
pursuit of which he has proved himself an ornament, and converting
him into a man whose business it is to cure private ailments, thereby
preventing him but too successfully, in most instances, from
pursuing that for which he has shown conspicuous talent. Thus we find
Cheselden, whose publication of an Anatomy of the Human Body, in
1713, and Osteography in 1733, had shown great anatomical ability,
was carried into a large private practice. And William Hunter, the
founder of the first great anatomical museum, was diverted from his
proper studies to become an obstetrician, in order to obtain money
for his special objects.
WILLIAM HUNTER, whose name has been previously mentioned in
our account of Cullen, was born on May 23, 1718, at Kilbride,
Lanarkshire, being the seventh of ten children of John and Agnes
Hunter. At fourteen he was sent to Glasgow for his education,
remaining there five years, it being his father’s wish that he should
enter the Church. Imbibing liberal opinions, he soon became averse
to this proposal, and his intimacy with Dr. Cullen determined his
thoughts towards medicine. In 1737 he became Cullen’s resident pupil
at Hamilton, and remained with him three years. It was then agreed
that he should go and study medicine at Edinburgh and London, and
afterwards return to Hamilton to a partnership with his master. Their
mutual attachment was lifelong.
The winter of 1740-1 was spent by William Hunter at Edinburgh, where
Monro primus was then teaching anatomy. The following summer he went
to London, and obtained the position of assistant to Dr. Douglas, who
was then engaged on a great book on osteology, which he did not live
to complete, the education of Dr. Douglas’s son being also placed in
his charge. He considered this offer so inviting that he remained
in London, although it was contrary to the wishes of his now aged
father, who thought the arrangement with Dr. Cullen preferable. The
father died on the 30th October following, aged 78.
The young man soon became expert in dissection, and he entered as a
surgeon’s pupil at St. George’s Hospital. His prospects were soon
after clouded by the death of Dr. Douglas, but his residence in the
family was not interrupted. As early as 1743 he communicated to the
Royal Society a paper on the Structure and Diseases of Articulating
Cartilages; and thereafter was occupied in preparing to commence
teaching anatomy. His opportunity came in 1746, when Mr. Samuel
Sharpe gave up a course of lectures on surgery, which he had been
delivering to a society of navy surgeons in Covent Garden, and
recommended William Hunter in his place. His lectures were found so
satisfactory that they asked him to extend his course to anatomy. He
had great timidity in lecturing at first, but soon gained confidence.
One of his pupils who accompanied him home after his introductory
lecture, relates that he carried his fees for the course, amounting
to seventy guineas, in a bag under his cloak, and that he remarked
that it was a larger sum than he had ever been master of before. The
profits of these courses he expended in no niggardly spirit, to a
large extent in befriending others, and he was consequently unable
to begin his next season’s lectures at the proper time, owing to lack
of means to advertise their commencement. He learnt a salutary lesson
by this delay, for he found that by so far straining his resources
he had only encouraged the idleness of his friends. This made him
for the future cautious of lending money, and more economical than
before, and may be said to have laid the foundation of his fortune.
In 1747 William Hunter was admitted a member of the College of
Surgeons, and in the spring took a continental journey, in which
he met Albinus at Leyden. Although he commenced practice as a
surgeon, he gradually discontinued it when he began to succeed as an
accoucheur, being appointed surgeon-accoucheur to both the Middlesex
Hospital and the British Lying-in Hospital. His conciliating manners
and pleasing address contributed to make him popular in this branch
of practice. In 1750 he obtained the degree of M.D. from the
University of Glasgow, and about the same time ceased to reside
with Mrs. Douglas, and went to Jermyn Street, so long associated
with the Hunters. In 1751 he visited his home at Long Calderwood,
Kilbride, and gratified his affection for Dr. Cullen, who had now
become established at Glasgow. As Cullen was one day riding with him,
he pointed out to Hunter how conspicuous Long Calderwood was from a
distance, when the latter replied with energy, “Well, if I live, I
shall make it still more conspicuous.” This, however, was his only
visit to his native place after his settling in London.
William Hunter joined the College of Physicians in 1755, and the
Medical Society about the same time. His “History of an Aneurism of
the Aorta,” appears in the first volume published by that Society, in
1757. In regard to aneurisms he had made many original observations,
such as to place the subject in a totally new aspect. Several papers
he contributed to this Society bear directly on problems of interest
in midwifery and the diseases of women.
It was in 1762 that the first edition of the “Medical Commentaries”
appeared, in which Monro secundus was severely attacked for having
claimed as his own discoveries which William Hunter had, years
before, promulgated at his lectures. It is to be regretted that in
regard to these very matters, as well as others, disputes afterwards
arose between William Hunter and his brother John, who it appears
had made at least some of these discoveries, while engaged as
assistant to his brother. In respect of a number of these, the elder
brother gave credit to his junior both when lecturing and in his
publications; in regard to others, the elder gave no credit at all
when John conceived himself entitled to much, or all, of the praise
of originality. Both brothers were strikingly sensitive as to their
claims to originality, and William Hunter on several occasions
seems to have regarded a new demonstration as his property because
made in his dissecting-room, though not by himself. Yet we find it
recorded that in the winter 1762-3, when the brothers had separated,
William Hunter would frequently say in his lectures: “In this I am
only my brother’s interpreter”—“I am simply the demonstrator of
this discovery; it was my brother’s.” We must recur to this subject
later, merely mentioning now, that John Hunter acted as his brother’s
assistant and dissected for him from 1748, and that from 1755 to 1760
a certain portion of the lectures was delivered by him; in 1760 they
separated.
There is no question that in general education, in manners, in
delivery, in all that makes the successful lecturer and the
attractive practitioner, William Hunter greatly excelled his
brother. Dr. Baillie has said of him, “No one ever possessed more
enthusiasm for his art, more persevering industry, more acuteness of
investigation, more perspicuity of expression, or indeed, a greater
share of natural eloquence. He excelled very much any lecturer whom I
have ever heard in the clearness of his arrangements, the aptness of
his illustrations, and the elegance of his diction.” If it were not
for the tenacity with which he pursued controversial topics, and his
unfortunate disagreement with his brother, there would be nothing to
mar the pleasurable nature of the picture of William Hunter. The way
in which he himself viewed this side of his character may be gathered
from the following extract from the Supplement to his Medical
Commentaries, published in 1777.
“It is remarkable, that there is scarce a considerable character in
anatomy, that is not connected with some warm controversy. Anatomists
have ever been engaged in contention. And indeed, if a man has not
such a decree of enthusiasm, and love of the art, as will make him
impatient of unreasonable opposition, and of encroachments upon his
discoveries and his reputation, he will hardly become considerable in
anatomy, or in any other branch of natural knowledge.
“These reflections afford some comfort to me, who unfortunately
have been already engaged in two public disputes. I have imitated
some of the greatest characters, in what is commonly reckoned their
worst part: but I have also endeavoured to be useful; to improve and
diffuse the knowledge of anatomy: and surely it will be allowed here,
that if I have not been serviceable to the public in this way, it has
not been for want of diligence, or love of the service.
“It has likewise been observed of anatomists, that they are all
liable to the error of being severe on each other in their disputes.
Perhaps from being in the habit of examining objects with care and
precision, they may be more disgusted with rash assertions, and
false reasoning. From the habit of guarding against being deceived
by appearances, and of finding out truth, they may be more than
ordinarily provoked by any attempt to impose upon them; and for
anything that we know, the passive submission of dead bodies, their
common objects, may render them less able to bear contradiction.”
It would have been pleasing if we could have related that William
Hunter allowed supreme merit to any one anatomist or physiologist
who preceded him. But we find him saying about Harvey: “In merit,
Harvey’s rank must be comparatively low indeed. So much had been
discovered by others, that little more was left for him to do, than
to dress it up into a system; and that, every judge on such matters
will allow, required no extraordinary talents. Yet, easy as it was,
it made him immortal. But none of his writings show him to have been
a man of uncommon abilities.” Dr. Hunter must surely have been aware
that this was carping criticism, for on a preceding page he had
spoken of Harvey as a first-rate genius for sagacity and application.
The years after his brother’s secession brought Dr. Hunter to the
summit of professional success. His obstetric knowledge and skill
were known to be so great that he was called in to consultation
respecting the Queen in 1762. Two years later he was appointed
physician extraordinary to her majesty. His increasing engagements
soon left him little time for his dissecting-room and lectures,
and he engaged as assistant one of his pupils, William Hewson, and
afterwards took him into partnership in his lectures. But this
connection was severed, owing to disputes, in 1770, and Hewson
commenced lecturing on his own account, and achieved great success,
which was cut short, however by his early death from fever in 1774.
Cruickshank was his successor with Dr. Hunter, and continued his
partner till the death of the latter.
In 1768, the year after his election into the Royal Society,
William Hunter was appointed the first Professor of Anatomy to the
newly-founded Royal Academy, and he entered upon this field of work
with great vigour, applying his anatomical knowledge to painting and
sculpture with his usual success. On the death of Dr. Fothergill he
was elected President of the Society of Physicians, now the Medical
Society of London.
The most remarkable work which William Hunter published was a great
series of folio plates of the Human Gravid Uterus, begun in 1751,
and published in 1775. In the dedication of this work to the King he
acknowledged that in most of the dissections he had been assisted
by his brother, “whose accuracy in anatomical researches is so well
known,” he says, “that to omit this opportunity of thanking him for
that assistance would be in some measure to disregard the future
reputation of the work itself.” But this acknowledgment did not
content John Hunter, who claimed the original merit of most of the
discoveries his brother announced, and communicated a full account to
the Royal Society in 1780, five years after his brother’s work was
published. At the next meeting of the Society William Hunter replied
to his brother’s claims, and John rejoined. The consequence was that
the Society published nothing on the subject, but retained the papers
of both in manuscript. The anatomical description of William Hunter’s
plates was completed by his nephew, Dr. Baillie, and published in
1794.
A still more important work, as regarded costliness, was the
formation of the museum, which still remains for the benefit of
students as the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow University. Economical
from the first, as regarded his personal expenses, William Hunter,
after laying aside a sufficient sum to provide for old age or
sickness, applied his thoughts to the foundation of an anatomical
school in London. During Mr. Grenville’s administration, in 1765, he
petitioned him for the grant of a piece of ground on which to build
an anatomical theatre, undertaking to spend £7000 on the building,
and to endow a permanent professorship of anatomy. It can hardly
be believed that such a munificent offer was rejected; but it was
the middle of the eighteenth century, and the government pension to
Dr. Johnson was probably considered the utmost stretch of public
countenance to learning and science. Lord Shelburne, it is true,
expressed a wish that Dr. Hunter’s proposal might be carried out by
means of a general subscription, and offered himself to contribute a
thousand guineas. But William Hunter was not the man to depend for
the execution of his projects upon an appeal of this kind, and he
consequently purchased a plot of ground in Great Windmill Street,
near the Haymarket, where he built a suitable house for his own
residence, with a lecture-theatre, dissecting-rooms, and a handsome
room for a museum. To this he removed in 1770 from Jermyn Street.
He had already a very large collection of human, comparative, and
morbid anatomy, which he continued to augment. He purchased all the
best collections of morbid and other anatomical specimens that were
offered for sale, such as those of Sandys, Falconer (which included
Hewson’s), and Blackall. To these were added numerous specimens of
rare diseases, presented to him by medical friends and pupils. We
discern the light in which he viewed these gifts by the following
statement in one of his publications: “I look upon everything of
this kind which is given to me as a present to the public, and
consider myself as thereby called upon to serve the public with more
diligence.” And the museum was always open to the many visitors who
were attracted by its fame.
Dr. Hunter’s tastes expanded. He collected fossils, rare books,
and coins. Dr. Harwood described his library as including the
most magnificent treasure of Greek and Latin books that had
been accumulated by any person then living. The anatomist even
discovered a bibliographical novelty in comparing two copies of the
Aldine edition of Theocritus, which he found to present material
differences, though representing the same edition. The collection
of coins in this museum was of such value and importance that an
illustrated quarto was devoted to the description of a portion of
them by William Combe. The preface gives an account of the progress
of the collection, which had now cost no less than twenty thousand
pounds.
Another important addition was made to the museum in 1781 in the
shape of Dr. Fothergill’s collection of shells, corals, and other
natural history specimens. Dr. Fothergill’s will directed that
William Hunter should have the first refusal of the museum at five
hundred pounds less than its value as ascertained by appraisement,
and Dr. Hunter eventually made the purchase for twelve hundred pounds.
This noble museum was left by his will, not to his brother John,
but to his nephew Dr. Baillie, and in case of his death to Mr.
Cruickshank, for thirty years, at the end of which time the
collection was to go to the University of Glasgow. Dr. Baillie,
however, handed it over to Glasgow before the time specified. Eight
thousand pounds was also left to keep up and increase the collection.
Dr. Hunter never retired from practice, although much tormented
by gout in his later years. He thought at one time of settling
down somewhere in Scotland, when suffering more than usual from
ill-health, but having found the title of an estate offered him
to be defective, and also having to provide for his constantly
increasing museum expenses, he laid aside his intention. He continued
most persevering both in his practice and in his lectures,
notwithstanding his augmented sufferings, until on the 15th of
March 1783 he was almost prostrated. On the 20th, however, he would
deliver his lecture introductory to the operations of surgery,
notwithstanding the dissuasions of his friends. Towards the end of
his lecture he fainted, and had to be carried to bed by two servants.
In the following night he had an attack of partial paralysis, from
which he did not rally. During his illness he said to his friend,
Mr. Combe, “If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write
how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die.” His brother John was
admitted to see and attend him on his deathbed, and no hint of
disagreement on these occasions is given. William Hunter died on
the 30th March 1783, in his sixty-fifth year, and was buried at St.
James’s Church, Piccadilly.
William Hunter was of an elegant figure, slender, and rather below
the middle height. The portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds adorns
the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. An unfinished painting by Zoffany
represents him in the attitude of lecturing on the muscles at the
Royal Academy, surrounded by academicians. Hunter’s portrait is the
only completed part. It was presented to the College of Physicians by
Mr. Bransby Cooper in 1829.
We hear of no matrimonial projects at any time on William Hunter’s
part. He was wedded to his museum, his profession, his lectures. He
lived a frugal life, eating little food, and that plainly prepared;
rising early, and being always at work. When he invited friends to
dine with him, he seldom provided more than two courses, and he
often said, “A man who cannot dine on one dish deserves to have no
dinner.” A single glass of wine was handed after dinner to each
guest. Some accused him of parsimony. The truth is that he did not
relish the amusements and luxuries in which most people indulge, but
he was by no means parsimonious as to the pursuits in which he found
real pleasure. His biographer, Dr. Foart Simmons, says: “There was
something very engaging in his manner and address, and he had such
an appearance of attention to his patients when he was making his
inquiries as could hardly fail to conciliate their confidence and
esteem. In consultation with his medical brethren, he delivered his
opinions with diffidence and candour. In familiar conversation he was
cheerful and unassuming. All who knew him allow that he possessed
an excellent understanding, great readiness of perception, a good
memory, and a sound judgment.”
Dr. Hunter made no bequest to his brother John; but he knew that the
latter was well established and successful. Still, his bequest of the
family estate at Long Calderwood to his nephew, Dr. Baillie, appears
not to have been altogether satisfactory to the latter, who handed
it over to his uncle John. Dr. Hunter left an annuity of £100 to his
sister, Mrs. Baillie, for life, and £2000 to each of her daughters.
Dr. Baillie was his residuary legatee.
* * * * *
The name of JOHN HUNTER recalls the glories of a great medical
school, the labours of an indefatigable dissector, the skill of a
brilliant operating surgeon, and the formation of the noblest of the
Hunterian museums, that of Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, the richest heritage
of the London College of Surgeons. The youngest son of the same
parents as William Hunter, John was the child of his father’s old
age, the latter approaching seventy at John’s birth on February 13th,
1728. The father died when John was ten years old, and his mother
appears to have been extremely indulgent to her youngest child,
and so little controlled his desires for amusements that he left
the local grammar-school almost destitute of classical knowledge,
which formed, of course, the staple instruction there imparted. The
imperfection of his general early education was a painful drawback to
John Hunter all his life.
There is no doubt that when about seventeen John went to Glasgow on a
visit to his sister, Mrs. Buchanan, whose husband, a cabinet-maker,
was failing to get on in business, owing to his musical and social
qualities. How far John took part in the business is not recorded,
but it is likely that he owed much of his mechanical skill to what
he learnt at the shop, which seemed to stick to him much more
closely than any book-learning. Finding his efforts to relieve his
sister from her difficulties ineffectual, he returned home to Long
Calderwood. Mrs. Buchanan died in 1749.
We have extremely little knowledge of the workings of John Hunter’s
mind in his youth, or how far he was conscious of the great talents
that were awaiting the appropriate incentive. His being much given
to country amusements is all that we know. At length he tired of
having no profession, and his brother William’s success attracted
him to London. He begged that he might pay a visit to him, and be
his assistant in anatomy, if possible. The request being acceded
to, John arrived in London in September 1748, was at once set to
work upon a dissection of the muscles of the arm to illustrate his
brother’s lectures, and succeeded beyond expectation. He was now
established in his brother’s dissecting-room in the winter, and in
the summer attended Chelsea Hospital under Cheselden. It was evident
that John had found an occupation suited to his capabilities, and
in his second season he was placed in full charge of the pupils in
the dissecting-room, while Dr. Hunter almost confined himself to his
lectures. In 1751 John became a pupil at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital,
where Percival Pott was then a leading surgeon. In 1754 he was
entered as a surgeon’s pupil at St. George’s Hospital, where a chance
of a surgeoncy was more likely than at St. Bartholomew’s. In 1756 he
was for some months house-surgeon at St. George’s.
Between these two last dates he became temporarily resident at
Oxford, where his name was put down at St. Mary’s Hall, June 5, 1755.
Probably the idea was that he should become a physician, taking an
Oxford degree in medicine; but he was in no humour “to stuff Latin
and Greek at the University;” and he never conquered his aversion to
classics. Long afterwards he wrote: “Jesse Foot[12] 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.”
The last entry of charges for battels against John’s name in the
buttery-book of St. Mary’s Hall occurs on July 25, 1755, so that
he probably resided less than two months. His name was kept on the
books, however, till December 10, 1756.
The only variation we hear of in his constant round of work was a
visit John paid to his home in 1752. In 1755 John was admitted to
a certain degree of partnership in Dr. Hunter’s lectures; besides
undertaking a definite part of the course, he was to supply his
brother’s place when absent on professional engagements. This was
a serious source of discomfort; the younger Hunter’s defective
education here became prominent. We may take a description of his
style of lecturing at a later period from his avowed enemy, Foot,
but it will be well to deduct one half from it as the product of
animosity. “In the beginning, these lectures were written on detached
pieces of paper; and such was the natural confusion of his mind,
that he would be frequently found incapable of explaining his own
opinions, from his notes; and after having in vain tried to recall
the transitory ideas, now no longer floating in the mind, nor
obedient to the will—after having in vain rubbed up his face, and
shut his eyes, to invite disobedient recollection—he would throw the
subject by, and take up another.”
Meanwhile, passing laborious days in the dissecting-room, John was
becoming a more perfect anatomist than his brother, and began making
discoveries on his own account, some of which William demurred to
at first, but usually accepted and brought forward in his lectures,
giving John credit for them. Among other discoveries of this time
may be mentioned that of the ramifications of the nerves of smell in
the nose, the unravelling of branches of the fifth nerve, previously
unknown, the tracing of the arteries in the gravid uterus, and the
existence of lymphatic vessels in birds. Other discoveries made by
John Hunter are described in William Hunter’s Medical Commentaries.
But it soon appeared that the younger brother felt he did not receive
a due share of praise and acknowledgment of his labours, while the
elder considered every discovery made in his dissecting-room as more
or less his property. John continued to dissect “with an ardour
and perseverance of which there is hardly any example. His labours
were so useful to his brother’s collection, and so gratifying to
his disposition, that although in many other respects they did not
agree, this simple tie kept them together for many years” (Sir E.
Home).
John gradually became led into the study of comparative anatomy, from
finding that structures which were complex in the human subject were
simpler in animals, or different in plan, in both cases throwing
light on human anatomy and physiology. Thus he made dissections
of all the commoner animals, and always preserved the parts which
interested him. He soon passed beyond the ordinary range, and made
acquaintance with the keeper of the Tower menagerie, that he might
obtain the bodies of such animals as died there. Similarly he even
would purchase animals when alive, from travelling showmen, simply
requiring them to bring him their bodies whenever they happened to
die. He bought all rare animals that came in his way: others were
presented to him by friends, and thus an ample supply of material was
secured.
There is some obscurity about the reasons which induced the younger
brother in 1760 to accept an appointment as staff-surgeon in the
army, joining the expedition to Belleisle in 1761. There is not much
doubt, however, that his health had suffered, and that a foreign
voyage and residence were calculated to restore him. In 1762 he was
employed with the army in Portugal, and in this experience laid
the foundation of his knowledge of military surgery. During this
expedition he neglected no opportunity of forwarding his studies in
comparative anatomy and physiology. Thus when at Belleisle, in order
to discover whether animals in a state of hibernation could digest
food, he introduced worms and pieces of meat into the stomachs of
lizards, and kept them under observation in a cool place. He found
the substances so introduced remained perfectly undigested. So in
1762, near Lisbon, he tested the hearing of fishes by observing the
effect of the report of a gun upon the inhabitants of a nobleman’s
fish-pond.
Retiring from the army after the peace of 1763, John Hunter found
his place in his brother’s dissecting-room occupied by Mr. Hewson, a
most capable dissector and lecturer. Hence he had no option but to
depend on his own exertions, and he started in London practice as a
surgeon in Golden Square. He found that practice came but slowly, and
formed a class for the study of anatomy and practical surgery to add
to his income. This, too, never proved nearly so remunerative as his
brother’s lectures, owing to John’s defects of style and expression
already mentioned. His success in practice was also retarded by his
refusal or failure to employ any of the arts or tact needed to gain
personal popularity. Although he was a good convivial companion,
at any rate in his earlier days, any festive enjoyment was always
subordinated to his zeal for a new specimen or a rare case, from
which he could learn something. He would take any trouble, or go
any distance, with these ends in view; while his feeling about an
ordinary case may be gathered from a remark to his attached friend,
Lynn, as he laid aside his dissecting instruments—“Well, Lynn, I
must go and earn this d——d guinea, or I shall be sure to want it
to-morrow.” Mere fashionableness Hunter could not tolerate. Dr.
Garthshore, a physician of the old school, always formal, polite,
and well dressed, accosting him one day in his dissecting-room with
his usual _empressement_, “My d-e-a-r John Hunter,”—was astonished
to hear the mocking reply, “My d-e-a-r Tom Fool.” The busy dissector
was not likely to value highly the formalities of the courtly doctor,
who as a contemporary remarks, “occasionally looked in, wound up his
watch, and fell asleep.”
Finding his collection of live animals grow beyond his means of
providing for them in town, Hunter purchased a considerable piece
of ground at Earl’s Court, then about two miles outside London,
and built upon it a house with a lawn behind it, upon and around
which he kept a collection of curious variety, and sometimes under
comparatively slight control, in order that their habits might the
more readily be watched. On one occasion two leopards got loose, and
one was scaling the boundary wall, while the other was engaged in
combat with dogs, when Mr. Hunter, unarmed, went out and seized them
both and replaced them in their outhouse; an act of courage which,
when it was over, nearly caused him to faint.
In 1767 an accident by which Mr. Hunter ruptured his tendo Achillis,
whether while dancing, or in getting up from the dissecting-table
after being cramped by long sitting, is not certain, occasioned
him to study carefully the process by which ruptured tendons are
healed. His method of treating himself was to keep the heel raised,
and to compress the muscle gently with a roller, thus preventing
any spasmodic contraction. He divided the same tendon in several
dogs, killing them subsequently at different periods to examine the
progress and nature of the repair; and his experiments and specimens
were the origin of the present practice of cutting through tendons
for the relief of distorted and contracted joints.
In the same year, 1767, Mr. Hunter was elected into the Royal
Society, before his brother—an evidence that his eager investigations
were already making him well known to men of inquiring minds.
At a later period he was one of the originators of meetings at
a coffee-house to discuss papers before their submission to the
Society generally. In 1768 he became a member of the Royal College of
Surgeons, and in the same year, supported by his brother’s interest,
he was elected surgeon to St. George’s Hospital by 114 to 42 votes.
He was now in a position in which more patients were at his disposal
for experimental or novel modes of treatment, and in which he could
take resident pupils on advantageous terms. In 1770 his brother’s
removal to his new premises in Great Windmill Street, led to John’s
transfer to his brother’s late house in Jermyn Street, where he
found much more ample accommodation for his work than he had hitherto
possessed. Here among his earliest pupils was Dr. Jenner, who was
an enthusiastic disciple, and whom Mr. Hunter would gladly have
permanently associated with him. He kept up a continual and intimate
correspondence with him throughout life, often asking Dr. Jenner for
information on questions of natural history.
Soon after his removal to Jermyn Street, namely, in July 1771,
Mr. Hunter married Anne, eldest daughter of Mr. Robert Home, an
army surgeon, father of his subsequent pupil and associate, Sir
Everard Home. He had been engaged to Miss Home for some years, but
financial reasons had hitherto postponed the marriage. Mrs. Hunter
had artistic, literary, and musical tastes, which to some extent,
by their expense, trenched on her husband’s scientific objects. She
is remembered as the author of the words of a number of Haydn’s
English canzonets, including the celebrated one, “My mother bids me
bind my hair.” Mr. Hunter sometimes found that his wife’s friends
were too fashionable or frivolous for his taste, and occasionally
his irritation got the better of his manners. It is related that
once, returning late in the evening after a wearisome day’s work, he
unexpectedly found his drawing-room filled with gay company, walked
straight into the room, and addressed the assembly in these terms:
“I knew nothing of this kick-up, and I ought to have been informed
of it beforehand; but as I am now returned home to study, I hope the
present company will now retire:” a hope speedily realised. Hunter
much preferred the weekly social assemblies at which his scientific
friends were welcomed, and where the conversation was pointed and
informing. Still there is no ground for reflecting on the general
happiness of Mr. Hunter’s married life. Of his two children who
survived infancy, he often said that if he had been allowed to
bespeak a pair of children, they should have been those with which
Providence had favoured him. His wife survived him till 1821, when
she died in her 79th year.
Early in 1771 Mr. Hunter published his first work of any magnitude,
the first part of his “Treatise on the Natural History of the Human
Teeth,” which long continued a standard work, largely appropriated
by subsequent writers. The second part, treating of the diseases of
the teeth, did not appear till 1778. In 1772 he made his mark at
the Royal Society by his celebrated paper on the digestion of the
stomach after death, which he attributed to the action of the gastric
juice upon the dead tissues. His stores of knowledge and learning
were afterwards made evident by many papers in the “Philosophical
Transactions,” of which the principal were those on the torpedo
(1773), on the air receptacles of birds, and on the Gillaroo trout,
1774; the production of heat by animals and vegetables, 1775; the
recovery of persons apparently drowned, 1776; the communication of
smallpox to the fœtus in utero, 1780; the organ of hearing in fishes,
1782; the specific identity of the wolf, jackal, and dog, and on the
structure and economy of whales, 1787; observations on bees, 1793;
and on some remarkable caves in Bayreuth, and fossil bones found
therein, 1794. The titles of these papers, however, convey but a
very imperfect idea of the wide range of subjects treated in them.
When he described a structure, he made it the starting-point of a
dissertation, in the course of which he brought to bear all his vast
stores of knowledge to establish general principles or to illustrate
important points of physiology.
In the autumn of 1772 his brother-in-law, Everard Home, became his
pupil. He describes Hunter’s museum at this time as already having
an imposing magnitude. All the best rooms in the house were devoted
to it, and it was continually being enlarged by his unremitting
toil. From six, or earlier, till nine, when he breakfasted, Hunter
dissected; after breakfast till twelve he was at home to patients.
Punctuality he observed to a fault. He would leave patients at home
in order to start punctually to his outside consultations, “for,”
said he, “these people can take their chance another day, and I
have no right to waste the valuable time of other practitioners by
keeping them waiting for me.” He kept one book at home in which to
enter these, and had an exact copy of it always in his waistcoat
pocket: thus those at home by referring to the book could invariably
find him. Once his former pupil, Cline, having to meet Hunter in
consultation, made a second arrangement, unknown to Hunter, to
take him to see another patient of his immediately after. Hunter’s
outburst of passion at this unjustifiable disturbance of his
arrangements for the afternoon was with difficulty appeased. His
punctuality at dinner, at four, was equally settled, but he strictly
ordered that dinner should be served whether he were at home or
not. For many years he drank no wine, and sat but a short time at
table, except when he had company; but he nevertheless pressed the
guests to disregard his example. “Come, fellow,” said he, in his
usual blunt way, to Mr., afterwards Sir William, Blizard, “why don’t
you drink your wine?” The guest pleaded in excuse a whitlow, which
caused him much pain. Hunter would not allow the validity of the
plea, but continued to urge him and ridicule his excuse. “Come, come,
John,” said Mrs. Hunter, “you will please to remember that you were
delirious for two days when you had a boil on your finger some time
ago.” This turned the laugh against Hunter, who ceased to importune
his guest.
In addition to his own pre-eminent industry, Hunter was not without
the most important talent of making others’ labours advance his ends.
Thus for fourteen years he employed a very capable young artist
named Bell, keeping him resident in his house, occupied in making
drawings, and anatomical preparations, and generally in museum work.
Bell was frequently called in also to act as Hunter’s amanuensis.
After he left Mr. Hunter, in 1789, he became an assistant-surgeon
under the East India Company, settling at Bencoolen, where his
zoological studies were continued with much promise of great
achievement; but, unfortunately for science, he died of fever in 1792.
In 1772 Hunter began to lecture on the theory and practice of
surgery, at first to his pupils and a few friends admitted
gratuitously, but afterwards on payment of a fee of four guineas.
This may be accounted the first introduction into this country,
perhaps to any, of the idea of principles of surgery, and the
necessity of a rational explanation of processes of repair, and of
a scientific basis for operations. Instead of a study of anatomy
alone being required by a surgeon, he elevated pathology into its
true position, and brought in all the aids with which physiology and
comparative anatomy could at that time illuminate the subject. But
in advance of any of these aids was his own clear insight, which
penetrated to the core of a question, and often brought out truth
which he could not himself explain, or only imperfectly. He never
overcame his difficulty in lecturing; at the commencement of each
course he always composed himself by a draught of laudanum. His
lectures, delivered on alternate evenings from October to April,
were given from seven to eight o’clock. His class was usually
comparatively small, never exceeding thirty; but the quality of his
audience was good, as may be gathered from its having included Astley
Cooper, Cline, Abernethy, Carlisle, Chevalier, and Macartney. He
never became an attractive lecturer; from deficiency in extempore
speaking, he was compelled to read his lectures, and seldom raised
his eyes from his manuscript. His manner was frequently ungraceful,
but his matter was for the most part highly intelligible and luminous
to those of his hearers who came prepared by thought and attainments
to be really edified, while he was often unintelligible to those
who had no practice in thinking for themselves and desired to keep
clear of that odious pain. In his lectures he was equally unsparing
towards his own and others’ errors, and he never clung to his own
past opinions. “Never ask me,” he replied to a question, “what I have
said or what I have written; but if you will ask me what my present
opinions are, I will tell you.”
The following extract from Ottley[13] gives an interesting view
of Hunter’s after-dinner habits. “After dinner he was accustomed
to sleep for about an hour, and his evenings were spent either in
preparing or delivering lectures, in dictating to an amanuensis the
records of particular cases, of which he kept a regular entry, or
in a similar manner committing to paper the substance of any work on
which he chanced to be engaged. When employed in the latter way, Mr.
Bell and he used to retire to the study, the former carrying with
him from the museum such preparations as related to the subject on
which Hunter was engaged: these were placed on the table before him,
and at the other end sat Mr. Bell, writing from Hunter’s dictation.
The manuscript was then looked over, and the grammatical blunders,
for Bell was an uneducated man, corrected by Hunter. At twelve the
family went to bed, and the butler, before retiring to rest, used to
bring in a fresh Argand lamp, by the light of which Hunter continued
his labours until one or two in the morning, or even later in winter.
Thus he left only about four hours for sleep, which, with the hour
after dinner, was all the time that he devoted to the refreshment of
his body. He had no home amusements for the relaxation of his mind,
and the only indulgence of this kind he enjoyed consisted in an
evening’s ramble amongst the various denizens of earth and air which
he had congregated at Earl’s Court.”
In January 1776 Mr. Hunter attained a court position, being
appointed surgeon-extraordinary to the king. In the same year he
became interested in the efforts of the Humane Society, and at its
request drew up a paper for the Royal Society on the recovery of
the apparently-drowned. Herein he makes a just distinction between
absolute death and suspended animation, illustrates different modes
of dying, and describes many signs of life and death. This year was
also the first in which he delivered the Croonian lecture to the
Royal Society, on muscular motion, a subject which he continued in
successive years till 1782 (omitting 1777); but the lectures were
never published, being, he said, too incomplete.
In the year 1773 Mr. Hunter suffered the first open onset of the
disease which occasioned him such acute pain and distress for many
years, in an attack of spasm accompanied by cessation of the heart’s
action apparently for three quarters of an hour. During the attack,
however, sensation and voluntary actions were kept up, and he was
able to continue respiring by voluntary effort. In the next few
years the attacks were somewhat rare; but from 1783 onwards he was
subject to severe angina pectoris whenever mentally agitated. In 1777
a constant giddiness or vertigo seized him on account of his being
called upon to pay a large sum of money for a friend for whom he
had become security, at a time when it was exceedingly inconvenient
to do so. This illness led him to visit Bath in the autumn, leaving
Mr. Bell and Mr. Home to catalogue his museum. At Bath Dr. Jenner
visited him and was surprised at his altered appearance, and here
first diagnosed his case as dependent upon an organic affection of
the heart: but he did not tell Hunter his diagnosis, fearing an
injurious effect. Returning to town, and soon recovering his usual
health and vigour, Mr. Hunter published in 1778 the second part of
his Treatise on the Teeth, dealing with their diseases. In 1779 a
paper contributed to the Royal Society on the hermaphrodite black
cattle or free martin gave him occasion to describe hermaphroditism
in general. In 1780 occurred the unfortunate controversy with
his brother, in regard to the discovery of the utero-placental
circulation, to which we have already referred. The estrangement
which followed was extreme, and protracted till the elder brother lay
on his deathbed. After his brother’s death, however, which occurred
just at the conclusion of John Hunter’s course of lectures, when he
had finished his lecture, he still seemed to have more to say; and at
length, appearing as if he had just recollected something, he began,
“Ho! gentlemen, one thing more: I need not remind you of ——: you all
know the loss anatomy has lately sustained.” He was obliged to pause
and turn his face from his hearers. At length recovering himself, he
stated that Mr. Cruickshank would occupy the place of Dr. Hunter.
This, and a few words more, were not spoken without great emotion,
nor with dry eyes. The scene was so pathetic, that a general sympathy
pervaded the class; and though all had been preparing to leave, they
stood or sat motionless for several minutes.
The eagerness with which Mr. Hunter sought and appropriated all
rarities is amusingly illustrated by his own remarks to Dr. Clarke,
who had a preparation illustrating extra-uterine pregnancy, which Mr.
Hunter often viewed with longing eyes. “Come, Doctor,” said he, “I
positively must have that preparation.” “No, John Hunter,” was the
reply, “you positively shall not.” “You will not give it me, then?”
“No.” “Will you sell it?” “No.” “Well, then, take care I don’t meet
you with it in some dark lane at night, for if I do, I’ll murder you
to get it.” It is reported that a specimen which remains one of the
most valued in the Hunterian Museum cost Mr. Hunter no less than £500
in 1783, namely, the skeleton of O’Brien, the Irish giant, seven feet
seven inches high. It appears that O’Brien had heard of and dreaded
the scalpel of the famous dissector, and took special precautions to
frustrate his ends. He made an Irish league with several compatriots
that his body should be taken to sea, and securely sunk in deep
water; but Mr. Hunter, more subtle than the giant, had made a big
bargain with the undertaker, who arranged that during the funeral
progress towards the sea the coffin should be locked up in a barn
while its guardians were drinking at a tavern. The corpse was
speedily extracted, and a sufficient weight of stones substituted;
and Hunter soon rejoiced in the possession of his prize, which he
drove to Earl’s Court in his own carriage, and quickly converted into
a skeleton.
In 1781 Mr. Hunter was called by the defence as a witness in the
trial of Captain Donellan at Warwick Assizes for the murder of his
brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton. In his evidence Mr. Hunter
gave all that could justly be deduced from the facts known to him,
but refused to speak positively as to the cause of death. Under
cross-examination he became confused and hesitating, as was certain
to be the case. This rather aroused the wrath of Mr. Justice Buller,
who in his charge said, “I can hardly say what his opinion is, for he
does not seem to have formed any opinion at all of the matter.” But
Hunter’s caution was undoubtedly justifiable.
In 1783 the lease of the Jermyn Street house expired, and finding
it difficult to accommodate his museum in any premises he could
obtain, Mr. Hunter purchased the remainder of the lease, extending
to twenty-four years only, of a house on the east side of Leicester
Square, with ground extending on the rear to Castle Street, where
there was a second smaller house. On the vacant ground Mr. Hunter
determined to build a museum for his collection, including a large
upper room fifty-two feet by twenty-eight, lighted from above, and
having a gallery running round it. A lecture-room and other rooms
were beneath. By the spring of 1785 this considerable undertaking
was complete, absorbing all Hunter’s spare cash and costing him more
than £3,000. But the museum, which was removed to it in April 1785,
had by 1782 cost him £10,000 in addition to valuable presents, so
that it cannot be said that the casket cost more than the jewels
although being on so short a lease it was doubtless expensive. The
museum in its new home became continually more celebrated, and
was visited by many foreign anatomists of distinction, including
Blumenbach, Camper, Scarpa, and Poli. At this period Hunter was at
the height of his career; his mind and body were in full vigour; “his
hands,” says Home, “were capable of performing whatever was suggested
by his mind; and his judgment was matured by former experience.”
There were diverse opinions about his skill as an operator, however;
Astley Cooper did not consider him especially dexterous or elegant.
Nevertheless his anatomical knowledge and great experience stood him
in good stead, and he was almost always successful in completing his
operations. It must be recollected, however, that special importance
was, in pre-chloroform days, attached to speed, and in this Hunter
did not excel. Indeed, to him, operating was a distasteful element
in a surgeon’s curative efforts. “To perform an operation,” he would
say, “is to mutilate a patient we cannot cure; it should therefore be
considered as an acknowledgment of the imperfection of our art.”
The year of greatest success, however, was marked by a period of
grave illness, with attacks of violent spasms of the heart, followed
by syncope. These recurred on occasions of extra exertion, anxiety
of mind, fits of temper, or even the fear lest an animal which he
wished to secure might escape before a gun could be brought to shoot
it. To this year (1785) we are indebted for the celebrated portrait
of Hunter by Sir Joshua Reynolds, in the possession of the Royal
College of Surgeons. He was a bad sitter, but Reynolds, dissatisfied
with his progress, one day was gratified by seeing Hunter in deep
reverie, with his head supported by his left hand. He at once turned
his canvas upside down, and began to record that life-like face,
which shows Hunter the philosopher in the true profundity of his
nature. Sharp engraved this portrait, and it was one of his greatest
successes.
The year 1785 was that in which Hunter first tied the femoral artery
in a case of popliteal aneurism, and thus initiated one of the
greatest modern improvements in surgery, relying upon the enlargement
of the smaller communicating or collateral vessels to make up for the
cessation of circulation through the principal vessel. This appears
to have been suggested to him by an experiment on the mode of growth
of deer’s antlers. Having been granted by the king the privilege
of experimenting with the deer in Richmond Park, he tied one of
the external carotid arteries supplying (_inter alia_) one of the
half-grown antlers. The antler became cold, but after a week or two
Hunter, to his astonishment, found that it had again become warm and
was growing again. On a _post mortem_ examination he discovered that
this continued growth was due to the enlargement of small branches
of the carotid above and below the wound, to an extent sufficient to
restore the blood-supply in the antler. And by a stroke of genius
Hunter saw that a similar process might be expected to occur in
cases of aneurism, and supersede the then generally fatal methods
of operating by means of amputation, or by directly evacuating the
sac of the aneurism. The fourth patient Hunter performed the new
operation upon lived for fifty years; a specimen illustrating the
case is preserved in the Hunterian Museum.
In 1786, on the death of Middleton, Hunter received the appointment
of deputy surgeon-general to the army; becoming in 1790, on the death
of Mr. Adair, surgeon-general and inspector of hospitals. In 1786
he published his long-deferred work on the Venereal Disease, which,
though printed and sold in his own house, met with a rapid sale, and
proved a very valuable work. In the same year he collected a large
number of his papers contributed to the Royal Society, together with
others not previously published, into a quarto volume entitled,
“Observations on certain Parts of the Animal Œconomy,” and thus
placed his researches in imposing bulk before the general public. The
Copley Medal of the Royal Society was awarded to Hunter in 1787 for
his discoveries in natural history.
About this time Mr. Hunter was allowed to nominate Home as his
assistant at St. George’s, and in 1792 Home undertook a further
portion of his work, by delivering the surgical lectures, for which
purpose he was intrusted with Mr. Hunter’s manuscripts. This enabled
Mr. Hunter to give more time to the preparation of his great
treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gunshot Wounds, which,
however, remained to be published by his executors in 1794. Death
was about to claim him, and the immediate cause which led to his end
was a dispute with his colleagues and the governors of St. George’s
Hospital about pupils’ fees. In his treatment of pupils personally
Hunter was always generous, especially when they showed ability and
zeal. Thus he gave Carlisle a perpetual ticket to his lectures,
having been much pleased with a preparation he brought for his
acceptance, showing the internal ear very excellently. He would often
also send valuable patients to young men starting in practice, and
struggling with pecuniary difficulties. He never concealed from his
pupils the hard work he had done to attain his position: “I’ve been
here a great many years, and have worked hard too, and yet I don’t
know the principles of the art,” he remarked to one. He did not,
however, get on so well with his fellow-surgeons at the hospital. He
so constantly insisted on the importance of studying physiology for
the benefit of surgical practice, while they had been educated with
little or no physiology, that his manner, as well as his pursuits,
procured him the stigma of being an innovator and enthusiast.
Early in 1792 one of his colleagues, Charles Hawkins, resigned the
surgeoncy, and Keate, then assistant to Gunning, the senior surgeon,
was elected his successor by a considerable majority, in opposition
to Home, who was, of course, Hunter’s candidate. The acrimony of the
contest appears to have led Hunter to announce his intention of no
longer dividing with them the fees received for the surgeons’ pupils,
owing, as he alleged, to his desire that the other surgeons should
pay more attention to their pupils, instead of neglecting them, as
he asserted they did. His right to do this was warmly contested,
and the question was referred to the subscribers to the hospital.
Hunter addressed them a long letter before the day of meeting, in
March 1793, detailing the efforts he had made since his connection
with the hospital to induce his colleagues to improve the system of
instruction, which efforts had proved ineffectual: one man “did not
choose to hazard his reputation by giving lectures;” another “did
not see where the art could be improved.” Consequently Hunter had
slackened his own efforts, causing a great falling off in the numbers
of students. The other surgeons replied that they had continued the
usual plan, and that if students had neglected their hospital duties
to pursue physiological studies, it was not their fault. If they had
given lectures, copies of them might have been taken by the pupils
and might get abroad. Mr. Hunter’s connection with the Windmill
Street Anatomical School, and his power of conferring posts in the
army, not his superior attention to his pupils, were the cause of a
larger number of pupils entering under him. They were able to show
that it would be a manifest disadvantage that only one surgeon should
instruct a pupil and not all four. The governors decided against
Hunter, for his plan must have produced confusion and discord. A
committee drew up rules for the admission and regulation of pupils,
and these were adopted without any consultation with Mr. Hunter. One
of them, which seemed specially directed against him, forbade the
entry of any pupil who had not had previous medical instruction.
Young men frequently came up to London from Scotland, recommended
to Mr. Hunter, and were entered by him at the hospital without
having had any previous medical instruction. A case in point arose
in the succeeding autumn. Two young men came up in the usual way,
and ignorant of the new rule, Hunter undertook to press for their
admission at the next Board meeting, on the 16th October 1793. On the
morning of the day he expressed his anxiety to a friend lest some
dispute might occur, as he was convinced such an occurrence would
be fatal to him. His life, he used to say, “was in the hands of any
rascal who chose to annoy and tease him.” Leaving home at the usual
hour, he forgot, strange to say, to take his list of appointments
with him, and Mr. Clift hastened after him with it. Later, arriving
at the hospital, he found the Board already assembled, and presented
and supported his memorial. During his speech one of his colleagues
flatly contradicted him, and Hunter immediately ceased speaking,
retired from the table, and, struggling to suppress his passion,
hurried into an adjoining room, which he had scarcely reached when,
with a deep groan, he fell lifeless into the arms of Dr. Robertson,
one of the hospital physicians. Dr. Baillie his nephew, and Home,
who was present, made every effort to restore him, but in vain. Thus
were cut short at once the meeting of the St. George’s Board, and the
life of the greatest surgeon they had had. He was buried in a simple
manner on October 22d, at St Martin’s in the Fields. A _post mortem_
examination had shown that his heart was wasted and diseased, and
his coronary arteries, mitral valves, and aorta much ossified and
diseased, thus justifying Dr. Jenner’s diagnosis.
In person Hunter was of about middle height, vigorous and robust,
with high shoulders and short neck, strongly marked features,
projecting eyebrows, light-coloured eyes, and high cheeks. He
always dressed plainly, with his hair curled behind; this had been
reddish-yellow in early life, but white latterly.
Mr. Hunter left little but his museum, which he wished the nation
to purchase and provide for. After years of effort, in the course
of which Mr. Pitt, on being appealed to, replied: “What! buy
preparations! why, I have not money enough to purchase gunpowder,”
Parliament in 1799 voted £15,000 for his museum (it had cost Hunter
over £70,000), and its guardianship was offered to the College of
Physicians, which declined it, and then to the College of Surgeons,
which accepted it, gaining at the same time a new charter and the
title of Royal. Hours during which the collection might be open for
professional men and others to study, and a keeper to explain the
collection, were stipulated for, and at least twenty-four lectures
were to be given annually on comparative anatomy and other subjects
by members of the college. These are the well-known Hunterian
lectures made illustrious by Owen, Huxley, Parker, and Flower. The
collection was placed in a temporary habitation in Lincoln’s Inn
Fields in 1806, and Parliament has granted in all £42,500 at various
dates for the building of a suitable museum. The present building,
however, has cost very much more than the sum mentioned, the expense
being defrayed out of the college revenues for diplomas.
During the weary years of waiting for the government consent to
purchase the museum, Hunter’s family had to be maintained by the
sale of his furniture and library, and his miscellaneous collection
of objects of _virtu_, coats of mail, weapons, &c.; and the mere
conservation of the museum was a matter of considerable expense.
His papers fell into the hands of Mr., afterwards Sir Everard Home,
who detained them without publishing them for many years, during
which time he himself published a vast variety of papers under
his own name in the Philosophical Transactions. It is generally
believed that many of these were largely derived from Mr. Hunter’s
manuscripts; and this the more, that, when at last, after many years
of evasion, his co-trustees of the museum pressed him to deliver up
the manuscripts as they were, he secretly burnt almost the whole of
them. In fact, Mr. Clift, who became keeper of the museum, and had
been long the assistant and friend of Sir Everard, when questioned by
the Commission on Medical Education, replied that all his life he had
been employed by Sir Everard in transcribing portions of Mr. Hunter’s
manuscripts, and in copying drawings from his portfolios, which Sir
Everard issued to the public as his own. It was in 1823, when Sir
Everard had received from the printer the final proof of his last
volume on Comparative Anatomy, that he disgraced his name for ever by
this great and irreparable destruction. Mr. Clift’s list of what he
remembers of the burnt papers fills more than a page of the memoir of
John Hunter prefixed to vol. x. of Jardine’s Naturalists’ Library.
And the bare enumeration and contents would give but little idea of
the labour expended in its production. “I have many times,” says Mr.
Clift, his assistant and amanuensis during the last twenty months of
his life, “written the same page at least half a dozen times over,
with corrections and transpositions almost without end,” so great was
the difficulty Hunter felt in adequately expressing his ideas. But
this only serves to increase our regret that these valuable originals
should have been destroyed. He generally wrote his first thoughts
or memoranda on all subjects on the slips torn off from the ends,
and the blank pages and envelopes of letters. He appeared to have no
desire of preserving his own hand-writing, but when they had been
copied, usually folded them up, and put them on the chimney-piece to
light the candle with; and the rough or waste copies on all subjects,
when copied out fair, were taken into his private dissecting-room, as
waste paper to dissect upon.
Sir Everard Home[14] describes his brother-in-law as “very warm and
impatient, readily provoked, and when irritated, not easily soothed.
His disposition was candid and free from reserve, even to a fault.
He hated deceit, and was above every kind of artifice; he detested
it in others, and too openly avowed his sentiments. In conversation
he spoke too freely, and sometimes harshly of his contemporaries;
but if he did not do justice to their undoubted merit, it arose not
from envy, but from a thorough conviction that surgery was yet in its
infancy, and he himself a novice in his own art; and his anxiety to
have it carried to perfection made him think meanly and ill of every
one whose exertions in this respect did not equal his own.” He was
called the Cerberus of the Royal Society, and certainly it appears
easier to admire and estimate him correctly now than it would have
been to live in comfort with him. Yet, when advanced in practice
and honours, he paid more instead of less attention to those whom
he had known earlier. Mr. Gough, who had charge of a menagerie in
Piccadilly, related that when he called on Mr. Hunter, if the house
was full of patients, and carriages waiting at the door, he was
always admitted. “You have no time to spare,” said he, “as you live
by it. Most of these can wait, as they have little to do when they go
home.” It is certain that Hunter only valued money as it enabled him
to carry on his researches. He introduces a patient to his brother
thus: “He has no money, and you have plenty, so you are well met;”
and he would never take fees from curates, authors, and artists.
With his lack of courtliness and evident zeal for dissection, it can
be no wonder that his income never reached £1000 before 1774. Yet
afterwards it increased to £5000 for some years, and had reached to
£6000 when he died. But all he could spare, throughout, went to his
museum.
Hunter’s sense of his own importance was evident, and often very
ingenuously expressed. “Ah, John Hunter, what! still hard at work!”
said Dr. Garthshore to him, finding him in the dissecting-room late
in life. “Yes, doctor,” replied Hunter, “still hard at work; and
you’ll find it difficult to meet with another John Hunter when I am
gone.” To Abernethy he said, “I know I am but a pigmy in knowledge,
yet I feel as a giant when compared with these men.” He could not
be described as a good conversationalist, yet his remarks, slowly
brought out, were often wonderfully pointed and forcible. In politics
he was a strenuous Tory, and “wished all the rascals who were
dissatisfied with their country would be good enough to leave it.” He
hated all public ceremony or display, and when begged to go to Sir
Joshua Reynolds’s funeral, fairly wished Sir Joshua and his friends
at the d——l.
He was undeviatingly honest, eminently a lover of truth, humane
and generous in disposition, warm and disinterested as a friend,
a kind affectionate husband and father. Some have called him a
materialist or even an atheist, but he appears to have had no doubt
of the existence of a First Cause. His study of religion was no
doubt limited by natural tendencies in his mind, and by his habitual
concentration on his work, and the evidence of revelation did not
make, so far as can be ascertained, a deep impression on his mind. As
to death, his view was, “’tis poor work when it comes to that.”
Hunter’s remains lay undisturbed in St. Martin’s Church, till
on March 28, 1859, they were removed, mainly through Mr. Frank
Buckland’s intervention, to Abbot Islip’s Chapel in Westminster
Abbey and deposited in the north aisle of the nave, close to Ben
Jonson’s tomb. His name and achievements are annually commemorated by
orations such as those from which the subsequent extracts are made,
but most of all by the Hunterian Museum and the lectures delivered in
connection therewith.
To expound Hunter’s views of life, and the results of his other
philosophical and practical studies, would lead us far beyond our
limits. Life he regarded as a principle independent of structure;
as a great chemist; as a sort of animal fire. “Mere composition of
matter,” he said, “does not give life; for the dead body has all the
composition it ever had. Life is a property we do not understand; we
can only see the necessary steps leading towards it.” He imagined
that life might either be something superadded to matter, or consist
in a peculiar arrangement of particles of matter, which being thus
disposed acquired the properties of life. As to equivocal generation,
he believed—and here he coincides with the best results of modern
sciences—that all we could have was negative proofs of its not taking
place. As to geological changes, he had strikingly original views,
regarding water as the chief agent, and pointing out that the popular
view by which the Deluge was supposed to account for finding marine
organisms in rocks was untenable. He could discern that in the long
past great oscillations of level and climatic variations had taken
place. In regard to development and evolution, he had very luminous
ideas pointing to modern discoveries. Thus he remarks “if we were
to take a series of animals from the more imperfect to the perfect,
we should probably find an imperfect animal corresponding with some
stage of the most perfect.”
We cannot more clearly emphasise the character of Hunter’s intellect
and work than in the words of two distinguished men of our own time,
both eminent pathologists, and qualified as few can be for estimating
such a man.
Dr. Moxon[15] says:—
“If we ask what gave him that most valuable power of estimating what
was worth doing, and what could be done—the power which Bacon calls
the ‘mathematics of the mind’—we find the reply, I believe, in these
great facts of his history. Firstly, that he was a man who had a
free youth, not over-taught, nor over-strained; and, secondly, that
in his manhood he worked with an eye to usefulness and duty, and not
only to notoriety, nor to the mere cry of ‘who will show us something
new?’ Indeed, the main and distinctive feature of his noble life
was his resolute pursuit of the practical aim of his profession, to
establish sound laws for scientific surgery and medicine. I have said
that the wonderful store of facts he collected constituted answers
to questions: Hunter the physiologist answering the questions of
Hunter the surgeon. He did not so follow physiology as to turn it
away from usefulness. And the results of his work he puts up in
his museum. And he will gladly have anything for his collection.
But always putting things by in their physiological order, mark,
so that in due time they shall answer to his further questions. He
will lecture on surgical principles,—true ones they must be,—if he
changes them yearly in accordance with his observations. But he
will not, he cannot, lecture on comparative anatomy or zoology. Why
not? It does not conform enough with his main bent to surgery, to
practical aim, to a duty. He believes in a vital principle, therefore
he must have an aim before him. He succeeds in his aim; and by the
masterly introduction of the operation on aneurism which bears his
name he saves thousands from a painful death. Led further by the
same enthusiasm for the true purpose of his life as a surgeon, he
inoculates his frame with a loathsome disease that he may have it
always by him to study it, regardless of danger and of pain.”
Sir James Paget’s views[16] are thus expressed:—
“The range of Hunter’s work matched with the time devoted to it.
Never before or since—I think I am safe in saying this—was any one
a thorough investigator and student in so wide a range of science.
He was an enthusiastic naturalist; as a comparative anatomist
and physiologist he was unequalled in his time; among the few
pathologists he was the best; among the still fewer geologists and
students of vegetable physiology, he was one, if not the chief; and
he was a great practical surgeon. He was surgeon to a large hospital
in London, and for many years held the largest practice in the
metropolis. In all these things at one time no one but Hunter ever
was eminent and successful.... There is not one of them in which he
did not make investigations wholly original—not one of them of which
he did not enlarge the area very far beyond that which had been
covered by his predecessors—not one of them in which he did not leave
facts and principles on record which it is impossible to count and
very hard to estimate.
“In all these characters of Hunter’s works we see that which was the
dominant character of his mind—massiveness and grandeur of design
were indicated in all to which he applied himself. And in perfect
harmony with this was the simplicity of his ordinary method of
work. It consisted mainly in the orderly accumulation of facts from
every source, of every kind, and building them up in the simplest
inductions. If he had been an architect, he would have built huge
pyramids, and every stone would have borne its own inscription. He
knew nothing of logic or the science of thought. He used his mental
power as with a natural instinct. He worked with all his might, but
without art. I know no instance so striking as in him of the living
force which there is in facts when they are stored in a thoughtful
mind.
“But Hunter was not only a great observer, he was a very acute one.
I think it would be difficult to find in all the masses of facts
which he has recorded any one which was either observed or recorded
erroneously. If there are errors in his works, they are the errors
of reasoning, not of observation. And it may be noted, as a singular
example of his accuracy, that when he tells his inferences it is
generally with expressions implying that he regarded them as only
probable: a fact he tells without conditions; when he generalises, it
is with ‘I suspect,’ ‘I believe,’ ‘I am disposed to think,’ or the
like.... He seems to have thought he had never reached farther than
the nearest approach to truth, which was at that time attainable,
and that a year or more of investigation would bring him nearer to
the truth, and then that which now seemed right would be surpassed or
set aside. He used to say to his pupils in his lectures, ‘Do not take
notes of this; I daresay I shall change it all next year.’”
Abernethy, who knew him well, says: “It is scarcely credible with
what pains Mr. Hunter examined the lower kinds of animals,” and he
quotes Mr. Clift as saying that “he would stand for hours motionless
as a statue, except that with a pair of forceps in either hand he
was picking asunder the connecting fibres of some structure” that he
was examining: ... “patient and watchful as a prophet, sure that the
truth would come: it might be in the unveiling of some new structure,
or in the clearing up of some mental cloud; or it might be as in a
flash, in which, as with inspiration, intellectual darkness becomes
light.”
FOOTNOTES:
[12] Author of the defamatory so-called Life of John Hunter, 1794.
[13] “Life of John Hunter,” by Drewry Ottley, 1835.
[14] Life of John Hunter, prefixed to the treatise on the Blood,
Inflammation, &c.
[15] _Medical Times and Gazette_, March 3, 1877.
[16] _Medical Times and Gazette_, Feb. 17, 1877.