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 twenty, 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 in which 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.
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 a fellow of the Royal Society. In the year 1768 he became a member of the incorporation 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 Burgoyne'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, and afforded him 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 publication, 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 became 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 Göttingen, and in 1783 he became a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Academy of Surgery in Paris. 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 intro-suspension, and on the mode of conveying food into the stomach in cases of paralysis of the oesophagus.
On the 16th of October 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 dropped down dead, being then in his sixty-fifth year, the same age at which his brother Dr Hunter had died.
HUNTER'S ISLES, a cluster of small islands lying off the north-west extremity of Van Diemen's Land, and frequented by numerous sea-fowls and seals. Long. 145. E. Lat. 40. 30. S.