HUNTER, John, an eminent surgeon, was the youngest child of John Hunter of Kilbride, in the county of Lanark. He was born at Long Calderwood on the 13th of July 1728. His father died when he was about ten years of age, from which circumstance his mother was induced to grant him too much indulgence. In consequence he made no progress at the grammar-school, and was almost wholly illiterate at the age of 20, when
he arrived in London. His brother Dr W. Hunter was at that time the most eminent teacher of anatomy, and John expressed a wish to attend him in his researches. The doctor, anxious to make trial of his talents, gave him an arm to dissect for the muscles, with proper instructions how it was to be performed; and the dexterity with which he managed his undertaking exceeded the expectations of his brother.
Having acquired some reputation from this first attempt, his brother employed him in a more difficult dissection, which was an arm wherein all the arteries were injected, and these and the muscles were to be preserved and exposed. In the execution of this task he also gave the highest satisfaction, and his brother predicted that he would become a good anatomist, and never want employment. Under the instructions of his brother, and Mr Symonds his assistant, he enjoyed every favourable opportunity of increasing his anatomical knowledge, since that school monopolized all the dissections then carried on in London.
He was admitted into partnership with his brother in the winter of 1755, and a certain department of the lectures was allotted to him, and he also lectured when the doctor was called away to attend his patients. The mind of Mr Hunter was peculiarly fitted for the study of anatomy, and the indefatigable ardour with which he prosecuted it is scarcely to be equalled. He applied to human anatomy for ten years, during which period he made himself master of every thing then known, and also made some considerable additions. He was the first who discovered the existence of the lymphatic vessels in birds.
With such eagerness did he apply himself to the study of comparative anatomy, that he even applied to the keeper of wild beasts in the Tower for the bodies of such as died there, and to all those who were in the habit of exhibiting wild beasts to the public. He made a purchase of every rare animal that came in his way, which, together with those presented to him by his friends, he gave to the showmen to keep till they died, the more effectually to prevail with them to assist him in his labours. So much was his health impaired by unwearied attention to his favourite pursuits, that in 1760 his friends advised him to go abroad, as he exhibited many symptoms of an incipient consumption. In October that year he was appointed a surgeon on the staff by the inspector-general of hospitals (Mr Adair), and in the spring of the ensuing year he went to Belleisle with the army.
He served during the continuance of the war, as senior surgeon on the staff, when he acquired his knowledge of gun-shot wounds. He settled in London on his return to England; but finding that his half pay and private practice could not support him, he taught practical anatomy and surgery for several winters. He built a house near Brompton, where he pursued the study of comparative anatomy with unabated ardour. He discovered the changes which animal and vegetable substances undergo in the stomach by the action of the gastric juice; the mode in which a bone retains its shape during its growth; and explained the process of exfoliation, by which a piece of dead bone is separated from the living.
On the 5th of February 1767, he was chosen F. R. S. In the year 1768 he became a member of the incorpo-
ration of surgeons, and in the following year was elected one of the surgeons of St George's hospital, through the influence of his brother. He published his treatise on the natural history of the teeth in May 1771, and in July the same year he married Miss Home, daughter of Mr Home, surgeon to Burgoine's regiment of light horse. His private practice and professional reputation advanced with rapidity after his marriage, and although his family increased, he devoted much of his time to the forming of his collection. He discovered the cause of failure in the cure of every case of hydrocele, and proposed a mode of operating in which that event may certainly be avoided. He ascertained that simple exposure to the air can neither produce nor increase inflammation; and he considered the blood as alive in its fluid state. He also discovered that the stomach after death is sometimes acted on and dissolved by the gastric juice, respecting which he communicated a paper to the Royal Society.
Comparative anatomy occupied the greater part of his time and attention, and he suffered no opportunity to escape him. He dissected the torpedo in 1773, and laid an account of its electrical organs before the Royal Society. A young elephant which had been presented to the queen, having died, it was given to Dr Hunter, which afforded our author an opportunity of examining the structure of that monstrous animal, as did also two others which died in the queen's menagerie. In the year 1774, he published an account, in the Philosophical Transactions, of certain receptacles of air in birds, communicating with the lungs, and lodged in the muscular parts and hollow bones of these animals. Several animals belonging to the species called Gymnotus electricus of Surinam having been brought alive to Britain in 1775, their electrical properties excited a considerable share of the public attention, and Mr Hunter purchased many of them after they died, for the purpose of prosecuting his favourite experiments. He published an account of their electrical organs in the Philosophical Transactions for 1775; and in the same volume appeared his experiments on the power of animals and vegetables to produce heat.
Mr Hunter was appointed surgeon extraordinary to his majesty in 1776; in the autumn of which year he grew extremely ill, when both himself and his friends apprehended that his life was in danger, but he happily recovered so far as to be able to publish the second part of his treatise on the Teeth in 1778, which completed the subject; and in 1779 he published in the Philosophical Transactions his account of the Free Martin. He was chosen a fellow of the Royal Society of Sciences and Belles Lettres at Gottenburg, and in 1783 he became a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Academy of Surgery in Paris.
In the building which he formed for his valuable collection, there was a room 52 feet by 28, lighted from the top, with a gallery all round, for containing his preparations. At this time he had reached the height of his career as a surgeon, with his mind and body in full vigour; and his hands were capable of performing whatever was suggested by his capacious mind, and his judgement was fully ripened by long experience.
He removed a tumor from the head and neck of a patient in St George's hospital, as large as the head to which it was attached; and by bringing the cut
edges of the skin into contact, the whole was almost healed by the first intention. He dissected or cut out a tumor on the neck, which one of the best surgeons in this country declared that none but a fool or a madman would ever attempt; yet the patient perfectly recovered. He discovered a new method of performing the operation for the popliteal aneurysm, by taking up the femoral artery on the anterior part of the thigh, without doing any thing to the tumor or the limb. This, from many subsequent experiments which have been successfully performed, must be allowed to stand high among the modern improvements in surgery.
Mr Hunter was engaged in a very extensive private practice; he was surgeon to St George's hospital; he gave a very long course of lectures during the winter season; he carried on his inquiries in comparative anatomy; he had a school of practical human anatomy in his own house, and was continually employed in some experiments respecting the animal economy. In 1786 he was chosen deputy surgeon-general to the army, at which time he published his work on the venereal disease, the first edition of which met with a very rapid sale.
In the year 1787 he published a treatise on the effect of extirpating one ovary on the number of young, which procured him the annual gold medal of Sir John Copley. His collection was now brought into a state of arrangement, which he shewed to his friends and acquaintances twice a year, and in May to noblemen and gentlemen, who were only in town during the spring. When Mr Adair died, Mr Hunter was appointed inspector-general of hospitals, and surgeon-general to the army. This event happened in 1792, at which time he was elected honorary member of the Chirurgo-Physical Society of Edinburgh, and one of the vice-presidents of the Veterinary College of London, then first established. He published also three papers on the treatment of inflamed veins, on introsception, and on the mode of conveying food into the stomach in cases of paralysis of the oesophagus.
The collection of comparative anatomy left by Mr Hunter remains an unequivocal testimony of his perseverance and abilities, and an honour to the country in which he was educated. In it is beheld the natural gradation from the lowest state in which life is found to exist, up to the most perfect and complex of the animal creation—man himself.
Mr Hunter enjoyed a good state of health, for the first 40 years of his life, during which he had no complaint of any consequence, except an inflammation of his lungs in 1759. The first attack of the gout which he ever experienced was occasioned by an affection of the mind, and every subsequent fit originated from the same source.
Mr Hunter was of a short stature, uncommonly strong and active, well formed, and capable of great bodily exertion. His countenance was open, animated, and deeply impressed with thoughtfulness towards the close of his life. Lavater seeing a print of him, is said to have exclaimed, "that man thinks for himself." For the last twenty years of his life he drank nothing stronger than water, and wine at no period agreed with his stomach. He was easily irritated, and not soon pacified when once provoked. He was an enemy to dissimulation, and free even to a fault. Few men re-
quire so little relaxation as Mr Hunter did, for he seldom slept above four hours in the night, but always an hour after dinner. In private practice he was scrupulously honest in declaring his opinion of the case before him, and ready on all occasions to confess his ignorance of what he did not understand. He sometimes spoke harshly of his contemporaries; which did not originate from envy, but from a full conviction that surgery was as yet in its infancy, and he himself a novice in his own art.
On October the 16th 1793, when in his usual state of health, he went to St George's hospital, and meeting with some things which irritated his mind, and not being perfectly master of the circumstances, he withheld his sentiments; in which state of restraint he went into the next room, and turning round to Dr Robertson, one of the physicians of the hospital, he gave a deep groan and dropt down dead, being then in his 65th year, the same age at which his brother Dr Hunter had died.