John, an eminent surgeon, naturalist, and anatomist, the brother of Dr William Hunter, was the youngest son of John Hunter, a Scottish yeoman, and born about February 14, 1728, at Long Calderwood, a small family estate in the parish of Kilbride East, county of Lanark. His mother was the daughter of a citizen of Glasgow, named Paul, who held the office of treasurer of the corporation. His father died when he was ten years of age, and being, in consequence, left much to his own guidance, he preferred country sports and occupations to literary pursuits. He had a brother-in-law, a cabinetmaker in Glasgow, named Buchanan, who had married his sister Agnes; and when about seventeen years of age he went to Glasgow, and stayed with Buchanan with the hope of being able to assist in freeing him from the pecuniary difficulties into which his convivial habits and inattention to business had led him. It is probable that it was here, as a cabinetmaker, that he acquired some of the manual dexterity he afterwards displayed, and it was this visit which probably gave origin to the statement of his biographer Foot, that he had served an apprenticeship to a millwright or carpenter.

When in his twentieth year John Hunter went to London to join his brother William. He was struck while at Glasgow by the report of his brother's success, and receiving a cordial invitation to join him, he set off on horseback in September 1748. His anatomical dexterity satisfied his brother, who employed him in his dissecting-room during the following winter session, and obtained leave for him to attend the practice at the Chelsea Hospital, under Cheselden, during the following summer. Cheselden was now more than sixty years of age, and had retired in a great degree from professional life, with the highest professional honours. It was under this great surgeon that John Hunter received his first instruction in surgery. He continued to attend regularly at Chelsea during the summers of 1749 and 1750, but in the following year Cheselden was obliged to withdraw from his duties in consequence of an attack of paralysis, and Hunter entered as surgeon's pupil, under Poit, at St Bartholomew's.

John Hunter was now a medical student, and seems to have been under little restraint as to his general conduct. He was known by the convivial and low associates with whom he mixed as "Jack Hunter," a nick-name he never wholly lost. He was employed by his brother to provide subjects for the dissecting-room, and became intimate with the bold, dissolute class of men who stole bodies from the grave, and known under the cant phrase of "resurrection-men." One of the amusements in which he took particular pleasure was to mingle with the rabble in the shilling gallery of the theatres, for the purpose of assisting to damn the productions placed on the stage—an office in which he is said to have displayed peculiar tact and vigour. This taint of coarseness and vulgarity was never eradicated during his subsequent life.

In the summer of 1752, John Hunter went into Scotland, and brought back his sister, Mrs Buchanan, now a widow; and in 1753 he was entered as gentleman commoner at St Mary's, Oxford. This attempt on the part of his brother William to elevate and refine his mind was unsuccessful, for in speaking of the circumstance afterwards to Sir Anthony Carlisle, when the latter was a student, he said, "They wanted to make an old woman of me; or that I should stuff Latin and Greek at the university; but," added he, significantly pressing his thumb-nail on the table, "these schemes I cracked like so many vermin, as they came before me."

Having decided upon being a surgeon, John Hunter entered, in 1754, as surgeon's pupil at St George's Hospital, and continued to follow the plan of assisting in the dissecting-room during the winter session, and attending hospital practice during the summer. Two years afterwards he served the office of house-surgeon to the hospital, the duties of which are such as particularly give the holder an insight into practical surgery.

In May 1754, John Hunter made the dissection upon which he laid claim to the discovery of the mode of connection between the uterus and placenta. Dr Mackenzie, then an assistant with Dr Smellie, had been very successful in injecting the arteries and veins of the uterus in a woman who had died pregnant, and applied to John Hunter for his assistance in dissecting it. This he rendered, made anatomical preparations of the parts, and showed the results to his brother William, who at first doubted his inferences, but afterwards acknowledged their accuracy. Twenty years afterwards, when Dr Hunter published his work on the Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus, he gave no special credit to his brother John for the discovery, an omission which led to a quarrel and entire severance of their friendship.

In the year 1755 John Hunter entered into partnership with his brother in the anatomical school, and had to deliver a proportion of the lectures. He was not, however, qualified for this position, for he had always great difficulty in speaking extempore, an acquirement absolutely essential to success in a teacher of anatomy. Hence, notwithstanding his thorough knowledge of his subject, he never gained a popular style. He now turned his mind to anatomical research in conjunction with his brother, and engaged with him in those disputes as to priority of discovery which constantly arise from time to time amongst scientific investigators. William carried on the warfare with his pen while John worked with the scalpel. Two of these disputes were with the Monros—one, as to the first successful conjecture of the tubuli testis with mercury, the other as to the functions of the lymphatics. It is generally allowed that as to the latter the doctrine of the two Hunters was the correct doctrine. Another dispute was with the great surgeon Pott, whom William Hunter accused of stealing, without acknowledgment, from himself and his brother the anatomy of congenital hernia. Pott denied the accusation; but, in fact, Haller had already anticipated the Hunters. In one particular point of the subject the credit of priority is due to John Hunter, for he was undoubtedly the first to explain the cause and mode of descent of the testis in the fetus.

About this time John Hunter traced the anatomy of the first pair of nerves within his nose. He subsequently published engravings in his Animal Economy, executed from his anatomical preparations of the parts. In 1758 he completed a series of experiments, instituted with the object of determining the accuracy of the doctrine that the veins are the only absorbents, and came to the conclusion that absorption was carried on through the lymphatics and lacteals exclusively. Modern research has shown that both are absorbents in the vertebrata, but that in the invertebrata no lacteals exist, and absorption takes place through the blood-vessels.

After having studied human anatomy for ten years, John Hunter began the pursuit of comparative anatomy, and it was therefore at this period of his life he laid the foundation of his future distinction. His health, however, had begun to suffer, and in the spring of 1759 an attack of inflammation of the lungs ended in a state of health which threatened pulmonary disease of a phthisical character. It was, therefore, thought necessary that he should leave London, and seek a more genial climate. With this object in view, he applied to Adair, the Inspector-General of Hospitals, for a medical appointment in the army, who immediately made him a staff-surgeon. John Hunter embarked early in 1761 with the armament sent to lay siege to Belleisle, during which, although short, he had ample opportunities for treating gun-shot wounds. In 1762 he proceeded to Portugal, where he remained till the end of the year. In 1763 peace was proclaimed, and John Hunter was put on half-pay.

While with the army, John Hunter studied comparative anatomy and physiology. He made experiments on lizards and snakes to ascertain whether digestion was carried on during hibernation, and he instituted inquiries into the faculty of hearing in fishes. It was during these campaigns that he made the greater number of his observations on gun-shot wounds, and that many of his peculiar views on inflammation were suggested.

Hewson had succeeded John Hunter in the anatomical school; so that the latter had to decide upon his course of life when he returned to London on half-pay. He determined to commence practice there as a surgeon, and entered into competition with Pott, Sir Caesar Hawkins, Bromfield, Samuel Sharp, and Warner. Although his natural talents and professional knowledge were much in his favour, he laboured under a great disadvantage in his want of gentlemanly bearing and tact. "The stone had need be rich that is set without foil," is a remark of the great father of the inductive philosophy. It was long, therefore, before John Hunter obtained a large share of practice. As a means of increasing his income he commenced to give lectures on anatomy and surgery to a private class; but so far were his views and talents from exciting the attention he might have reasonably expected, his hearers never numbered twenty.

John Hunter occupied this period of forced leisure from the labours of professional life by unremitting researches into comparative anatomy. He got the carcasses of animals from the Tower or from itinerant zoological collections, and would purchase rare animals for these menageries on the condition that when they died the dead body was to be restored to him. Sir Everard Home used to state that as soon as he had accumulated fees to the amount of ten guineas, he always purchased some addition to his collection. Indeed, he was sometimes quite ready to borrow from his friends when his own cash was run out, and the temptation great.—"Pray, George," said he one day to Nicol the bookseller, with whom he was very intimate, "have you got any money in your pocket?" Nicol replied in the affirmative. "Have you got five guineas? because, if you have, and will lend it to me, you shall go halves." "Halves in what?" inquired his friend. "Why halves in a magnificent tiger, which is now dying in Castle Street." Nicol lent the money, and John Hunter got the tiger.

John Hunter had by this time fully entered into the great business of his life, namely, the building up of human physiology and pathology from the sure foundations of natural history and comparative anatomy, and he pursued it with characteristic energy and enthusiasm. As many of the inquiries and experiments he wished to make were impracticable in a town, he purchased a piece of ground at Brompton, called Earl's Court, and built a small house on it. Here he had a menagerie, and here he pursued most of the researches which were communicated to the Royal Society, or published in his work on the Animal Economy. It was his greatest pleasure to attack the animals playfully, and excite them to put into action their various instinctive methods of self-defence. On one of these occasions, a little bull, which the queen had given to him, and with which he had been wrestling, threw him down, and would have injured him seriously, if one of his servants had not come to his rescue. He had also an awkward adventure with two leopards which had broken their chains, and got amongst the dogs. The animals had a fierce encounter, and Hunter hastened to separate them by leading the two leopards back to their den. When the danger was over, he became so agitated at the recollection of it, that he fainted.

In 1767 John Hunter was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, before his brother William, who had been ten years longer in London. In this year he ruptured his tendo Achillis while dancing. In 1768 he was appointed to the office of surgeon to St George's Hospital, and soon after became a member of the Corporation of Surgeons. He now began to take pupils, having with each a fee of 500 guineas. Jenner, in 1770, was one of these; but all his pupils were distinguished in their profession. Hunter subsequently kept up an intimate correspondence with Jenner at Berkeley, with whom he had a community of pursuits in the study of natural history. Anything curious "either in the fish or flesh way" was always acceptable from Jenner, who forwarded to him hedge-hogs, fossils, salmon-spawn, bats, a porpoise, crows' nests, and the like.

In May 1771 Hunter published the first part of his Treatise on the Teeth; the second part did not appear until 1778. In 1771 he was married to Miss Home, the daughter of a surgeon in the army. Her brother Everard was Hunter's pupil, and was subsequently made a baronet. In 1772 he communicated to the Royal Society the results of his observations on the post mortem digestion of the stomach by the gastric juice. In the spring of 1773 he had an alarming attack of spasm—the first indication of that disease of the heart which was ultimately fatal. It seemed to have been closely connected with his gouty predisposition, and to have been immediately induced by severe mental emotion. In the autumn of the same year, he commenced his first distinct course of lectures on surgery. To him lecturing was so irksome a task, that he never commenced his course without taking laudanum to relieve his uneasy sensations; yet he continued the practice for many years. His Researches on the Torpedo were published this year. In 1774 two of his papers were published in the Transactions of the Royal Society; one on the air-receptacles of birds, the other on the stomach of the gillaroo trout. His professional success was now sure, but this year was the first in which his income exceeded £1,000. All this time his museum had been enlarging, and his opportunities for research extending, until it was necessary to have special help. He, therefore, engaged Mr Bell for ten years as his assistant, but he ultimately remained with him fourteen.

In 1775 Hunter entertained thoughts of founding a School of Natural History, and sought the co-operation of Jenner, premising that it was necessary that the latter should be "able and willing to lay down 1000 guineas." Jenner declined, and the project fell through. In this year he communicated to the Royal Society a paper on the heat of animals and vegetables.

The appointment of surgeon-extraordinary to the king was conferred upon John Hunter in 1776. In the course of the same year, he drew up, at the request of the Royal Humane Society, a memoir on the means to be employed in the recovery of drowned persons, which was published in the Philosophical Transactions. He also commenced this year a series of six Croonian lectures on muscular motion.

In the spring of 1777, Hunter was attacked with a cerebral affection, characterized by constant vertigo and morbid acuteness of the organs of sense; and in the autumn of the same year he went to Bath for three months for the benefit of his health. Jenner saw him there, and his diagnosis of Hunter's disease was, that it was angina pectoris, a serious and very painful affection of the heart.

In 1778 he presented to the Royal Society his second memoir on the heat of vegetables and animals, and in 1779 his memoir on the hermaphrodite black cattle, or free-martin. In 1780 he sent to the same society a paper on the structure of the placenta, in which he claimed for himself the discovery of the true mode of union between the uterus and that organ. Five years previously, William Hunter had claimed the same discovery in his work on the Gravid Uterus, and it could hardly be expected that he would allow John's claim to pass uncontradicted. The result of the affair was a complete estrangement on the part of the two brothers. Three years after this, when William was on his death-bed, John requested permission to see him, which was granted, and he continued to attend him until his death, and occasionally passing the catheter for him.

In March 1781 Hunter appeared as a witness in the celebrated trial of Captain Donellan for the murder of his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton. In the same year he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Belles Lettres at Gottenberg. In 1782 he completed his Croonian lectures. In 1783 he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Surgery and the Royal Society of Medicine at Paris. In the same year he began to build his museum in Leicester Square, which was not completed until 1785. He also, in conjunction with Dr Fordyce and others, took an active part in 1783 in establishing the "Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge." His paper on inflammation of the veins was published in the first volume of the Transactions of this society.

In 1785 his cardiac affection assumed a new form, coming on in spring after the cessation of some slight symptoms of gout, and continuing to recur paroxysmally during the rest of his life, whenever he had any unusual exertion to make or mental anxiety to suffer. He again sought health and rest at Bath. It was after his return that he practised the new method of tying the artery for popliteal aneurism.

In 1786 he was appointed deputy-surgeon-general to the army. Early in the same year he published his work on the Venereal Disease, and towards the close, his Animal Economy, which consisted chiefly of his most important papers from the Philosophical Transactions. In 1787 his memoirs on the specific identity of the wolf, jackal, and dog, and on the structure and economy of whales, were printed in the Philosophical Transactions. In this year, also, he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society, and was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society. He had added in 1783 the skeleton of Byrne or O'Brien, the Irish giant, to his museum, at the cost of five hundred pounds, and, having in all respects completed its arrangements, he threw it open to the public during the months of May and October in each year.

In December 1789 Hunter experienced a sudden and entire loss of memory for half an hour, a state of the brain evidently in intimate dependence on the state of the heart. The spasms about the precordia were now so readily induced by any mental excitement that he was accustomed to say his life "was in the hands of any rascal who chose to annoy and tease him."

In 1792 he contributed his last paper to the Philosophical Transactions, being the results of his observations on the hive-bee for twenty years. His fondness for bees was always great, and he had several hives in his conservatory at Earl's Court. In this year he resigned his lectureship on surgery in favour of his brother-in-law Home, principally with the view of completing his treatise on Inflammation. He did not live, however, to see the entire work through the press. On the 16th of October 1792, he attended a board meeting at St George's Hospital, with the view of obtaining a modification of a bye-law recently passed regulating the admission of pupils, in favour of two of his countrymen just come to London. In the course of his remarks he made some statements which one of his colleagues thought it necessary instantly and flatly to contradict. Hunter immediately ceased speaking, and hurried into the adjoining room, where he instantly fell lifeless into the arms of Dr Robertson, one of the physicians to the hospital. His body was examined to ascertain the cause of death. The carotid arteries and their branches within the skull were in fact thickened and ossified. The result of his pulmonary attack in 1759 was found in the form of firm adhesions between the left lung and costal pleura; in addition to thickening of the pericardium, the coronary arteries and tricuspid and mitral valves were much ossified. The aortal valves were also thickened and rigid. John Hunter died in his sixty-fifth year. His body was interred in the church of St Martin in the Fields. In person, John Hunter has been described as about the middle stature, of a vigorous and robust frame, with high shoulders and short neck. His features were rather large and strongly marked; his eyebrows projecting, his eyes of a light colour, his cheeks high, his mouth somewhat underhung. In mental character he was a genius, and one of a family in which talent was hereditary. Joanna Baillie and Dr Baillie were the children of a sister; and, besides his brother William, another brother of the family, whose career was cut short by death, manifested considerable mental talent. He had a large power of induction, acute powers of observation, a vivid and fertile imagination, and unwearyed energy. He wanted a natural refinement of feeling; he had never been taught self-control; he had had no literary culture. He was therefore often coarse in his language, violent in his temper, quarrelsome, selfish, and egotistical. Of religious sentiment he made no profession.

John Hunter's museum was purchased in 1799 by the nation, and placed in the keeping of the College of Surgeons of London. The occasion was seized for securing a new charter for the College, containing the grant of the prefix Royal to its title, and permission to examine for its diplomas. From this event a new era in British surgery may be dated; and in connection with the name of John Hunter, the "Hunterian Museum" is one of the national institutions. Unfortunately, in 1812, his brother-in-law (afterwards Sir Everard Home) took away the ten folio volumes of minutes of dissections which John Hunter had left, along with many other valuable papers, without permission being had from the trustees, but with the alleged intention of preparing from them a catalogue of the museum. Time passed on; no catalogue was forthcoming; and at last, after repeated inquiries, Home acknowledged that he had burnt the whole, pretending that in doing so he had acted in accordance with the directions of John Hunter. The allegation was altogether incredible; but another and more probable cause was surmised, namely, that these volumes would, on examination, have been found to have supplied the substance of the papers which Sir Everard Home contributed to the Royal Society in greater number than any other single member of that distinguished body had contributed since its foundation.

Hunter, Dr William, an eminent anatomist and physician, was born on the 23rd of May 1718, at Long Calderwood, in the parish of Kilbride East, county of Lanark, Scotland. He was an elder brother of John Hunter, and the seventh child of the family. His paternal great-grandfather was a younger son of Hunter of Hunterston, chief of the family of that name. At the age of fourteen he went to study at the University of Glasgow, where he remained five years. His father had designed him for the church, but he had an insuperable aversion to theological pursuits, and having the reputation of a good scholar, he sought to obtain the appointment of parochial schoolmaster in his native parish. To his great disappointment he was unsuccessful in his application. At this time, however, he formed an acquaintance with Cullen, afterwards the distinguished professor of Edinburgh, but who was then just established as a medical practitioner at Hamilton, and being thereby induced to enter the medical profession, went in 1737 to reside with him. After remaining with Cullen three years, it was agreed that they should enter into partnership, and Hunter should take the surgical part of the practice. Previously to completing this arrangement, Hunter was to study in London and Edinburgh, and on his return to take the entire charge of the practice, so as to afford Cullen similar advantages. A very different career was, however, marked out for them in the metropolis of the North and of England.

In pursuance of the plan laid down, William Hunter attended the lectures given in the medical faculty of the university during the session of 1740–41. Amongst the Hunter, Dr courses was that of Dr Alexander Monro. In the summer of 1741 he went to London, and took up his residence at the house of Dr Smellie, then an apothecary in Pall Mall. He brought with him a letter of introduction to Dr James Douglas from Mr Foulis, the famous printer of Glasgow, who had been useful to Hunter in procuring for him different editions of Horace's works. Douglas was then engaged on a work on the bones (which, however, he did not live to complete), and was seeking for a suitable person to employ as a dissector. Being pleased with William Hunter, he invited him to enter his family as tutor to his son, and assistant to himself. This invitation was accepted, and at the same time, by Douglas's friendly assistance, he entered as surgeon's pupil at St George's Hospital; under Mr James Wilkie, and as a dissecting pupil under Dr Frank Nichols, who was then one of the best anatomists of the day, and had formerly taught anatomy at Oxford. He likewise attended a course of experimental philosophy, delivered by Desaguliers.

Before many months had elapsed William Hunter lost his friend and patron Douglas, who died in 1742, but he still continued to reside in the family, and act as tutor to the son. Before the death of Douglas he had made so much progress in his dissections that the former had had drawings of several of his preparations engraved. In the year following (1743) he communicated to the Royal Society an essay on the structure and diseases of articulating cartilages. To teach anatomy was now his plan of life, and he therefore began to collect preparations and take other steps to fit himself for the pursuit. It was at this time the foundation of his museum was laid. An opportunity of commencing the teaching of anatomy shortly offered. A society of naval surgeons had an apartment in Covent Garden, where they had engaged Sharpe, the eminent surgeon, to deliver a course of lectures on operative surgery. Sharpe continued to repeat the course until, finding it inconvenient, he declined the task in favour of William Hunter, who gave his hearers so much satisfaction that they engaged him to teach them anatomy.

William Hunter's first anatomical course was delivered to this society in 1746. Mr Watson, one of his earliest pupils, accompanied him home after the trying moment of his introductory discourse. He had just received seventy guineas as admission-fees, which he carried in a bag under his cloak, and remarked on the way to Watson that it was a larger sum than he had ever before possessed. The profits of his two first courses were considerable; but in consequence of too liberally relieving the wants of some friends, he had not money sufficient to defray the expense of the usual advertisements of the third course, and was obliged to defer the commencement of it for a fortnight. This embarrassment was an impressive lesson to him, and probably was one of the remote causes of the large fortune he accumulated.

In 1747 he was admitted a member of the Corporation of Surgeons of London; and in the spring of 1748 accompanied his pupil Douglas on a tour through Holland and France, returning in the autumn to commence his usual course of lectures. At Leyden he visited Albinius, whose beautiful injections of the blood-vessels strongly attracted his attention, and excited his emulation. In the autumn of this year his brother John came to him. William Hunter at first practised both surgery and midwifery; but, like his patron Douglas, he gave the preference to the latter department: consequently, in 1748, he took the appointment of surgeon-accoucheur to the Middlesex Hospital, and, in 1749, to the British Lying-in Hospital. In 1750 he seems to have resolved to abandon the practice of surgery altogether, for in that year he became a graduate of the University of Glasgow. Previously to this he had left the family of Mrs Douglas, and taken a house in Jermyn Street. This was the crisis of William Hunter's career, and fortune aided his first commencement of practice. His rivals were moving away, or unable to compete with him for public favour. Smellie was unpleasing in his person and manners; William Hunter was his equal in acquirements, his superior in person and deportment. Sir Richard Manningham, one of the most eminent accoucheurs of the day, also died about this time; and Dr Sandys, who divided with him the practice of the fashionable world, retired within a few years to the country. William Hunter subsequently secured Sandys' large collection of anatomical preparations by purchase from Mr Bromfield for L200.

In 1751 we find him devoting the whole of his energies to his professional labours and pursuits, and forming plans of great and varied extent and importance. In a letter to Cullen, he says, "I want to tell you many things about colleges, hospitals, professorships, chariots, wives, &c., &c. I'm busy in forming a plan for being an author. In short, my head is full of—a thousand things." His plans as to marriage were amongst those which he never completed. In this year he paid his first and only visit to his native country, where he found Cullen established at Glasgow, and in rising reputation both as a practitioner and lecturer, so that the two friends could congratulate each other on their mutual prosperity. In 1752 he demonstrated to his class his method of injecting the testis with mercury. In 1753 he had a long illness—"a strange sort of eruptive fever," as he describes it in a letter to Cullen. In 1754 he was elected a member of the Medical Society of London, and took his brother John into partnership; and in 1755 he succeeded Dr Layard as physician to the British Lying-in Hospital. In 1756 he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians in London. In 1757 his first contribution to the Medical Observations and Inquiries appeared in the first volume of that work; it was "The History of an Aneurism of the Aorta." Various papers on practical subjects from his pen appear in successive volumes of this work, i.e., in the 2d, a history of an emphysema, and in the 4th, 5th, and 6th essays on varicose and other aneurisms, displacements of the uterus, and malformations of the heart, the last illustrated by plates.

John Hunter having left his brother in 1759 to join the army, the latter engaged that distinguished anatomist, William Hewson, to take his place both as assistant and partner. The connexion between the two brothers had not been a happy one; William was irascible—John quarrelsome and vulgar. Indeed, the only inducement which led to its continuance on the part of William Hunter was his brother's extraordinary skill as a dissector, and the valuable contributions he was constantly making to the museum.

In 1762 Dr Hunter was consulted by the queen, then pregnant, and on the 12th August he writes to Cullen to announce the birth of the Duke of Cornwall. "I owe it to you," he adds, "and thank you from my heart for the great honour I now have, and have had for some time, though very few know anything of it.—I mean having the sole direction of her majesty's health, as a child-bearing lady." Two years afterwards he was appointed physician-extraordinary to the queen. In this year, also, he published the first part of his Medical Commentaries, proposing that the second should be constituted by his work on the Human Gravid Uterus. In this work he gave a summary of his controversy with the Monros in 1757—carried on at first in the pages of the Critical Review—and asserted his prior claim to the method of injecting the testis with mercury, and to the discovery of the uses of the lymphatics. He also endeavoured to set himself right as to his controversy with Pott, and defends his brother's views on congenital hernia.

When William Hunter began to practise midwifery, he was desirous of acquiring a fortune sufficient to place him in easy and independent circumstances. Before many years had elapsed, he found himself in possession of a sum adequate to his wishes in this respect; and this he set apart as a final resource whenever age or infirmities should oblige him to retire from business. As his wealth continued to accumulate, he formed a design of engaging in some scheme of public utility, and at first had it in contemplation to found an anatomical school in the metropolis. For this purpose, about the year 1765, during the administration of Mr Grenville, he presented a memorial to that minister, in which he requested the grant of a piece of ground in the Mews, for the site of an anatomical theatre. Dr Hunter undertook to expend L7000 on the building, and to endow a professorship of anatomy in perpetuity. This scheme did not meet with the reception it deserved. In a conversation on this subject, which he had soon afterwards with the Earl of Shelburne, his lordship expressed a wish that the plan might be carried into execution by subscription, and very generously requested to have his name set down for 1000 guineas. Dr Hunter's feelings would not allow him to adopt this proposal. He chose rather to execute it at his own expense, and accordingly purchased a spot of ground in Great Windmill Street, where he erected a spacious house, to which, in 1768, he removed from Jermyn Street. In this building, besides a handsome amphitheatre and other convenient apartments for his lectures and dissections, there was one magnificent room appropriately fitted up as a museum. The cost of the whole was above L8000. Of the magnitude and value of his anatomical collection some idea may be formed, when we consider the number of years he employed in making the anatomical preparations and in the dissection of morbid bodies, and the eagerness with which he procured additions from the collections of Sandys, Hewson, Falconer, Blackall, and others, that were at different times offered for sale in London. His specimens of rare diseases were likewise frequently increased by presents from his medical friends and pupils; who, when anything of this sort occurred to them, very justly thought they could not dispose of it more properly than by placing it in Dr Hunter's museum. Speaking of an acquisition in this way in one of his publications, he says, "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."

Before his removal to Windmill Street, his collection chiefly illustrated human and comparative anatomy, and pathology; but now he extended his views to fossils, and to the promotion of classic and polite literature. In a short space of time he became possessed of a most magnificent collection of Greek and Latin books. A cabinet of ancient medals contributed likewise much to the richness of his museum. A description of part of the coins in this collection, struck by the Greek free cities, was afterwards published by his friend Mr Combe. In the preface some account is given of the progress of the collection, which had been formed since the year 1770, with singular taste, and at the expense of upwards of L20,000. In 1781, the museum received a valuable addition of shells, corals, and other illustrations of natural history, which had been collected by the late Dr Fothergill, who gave directions by his will, that his collection should be appraised after his death, and that Dr Hunter should have the refusal of it at L500 under the valuation. This was accordingly done, and Dr Hunter purchased it for the sum of L1200.

By William Hunter's will, the use of his museum, under the direction of trustees, devolved to his nephew Dr Matthew Basilie, and in case of his death, to Mr Cruikshank, for the term of thirty years; at the end of which period the whole collection was bequeathed, with L9000, to the university of Glasgow, where it is now deposited. In 1767 William Hunter was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in the year following communicated to its Transactions Observations on the Bones found on the banks of the Ohio River. In 1768 he became a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, and in the same year was appointed by the king to be professor of anatomy to the Royal Academy of Arts, which he had recently founded. Hunter performed the duties of the new professorship with remarkable tact. The originality and soundness of his teaching, and his application of anatomical knowledge to painting and sculpture, evinced the greatness and versatility of his mind.

In 1770 the connection of William Hunter with Hewson ceased, in consequence of some disputes, and the latter was succeeded by Cruikshank, a name deservedly celebrated amongst anatomists. The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus appeared in 1775, a work of classical value and importance, and which as such has lately been one of the works selected for republication by the Sydenham Society. Ten of the thirty-four plates which it contains had been completed so early as 1751; but the publication was retarded by Hunter's anxiety to render his work as perfect as possible. In the preface he fully acknowledges the assistance he had derived from his brother John in making the necessary dissections, thanking him for it, and passing a graceful compliment upon his skill. Five years afterwards (1780), John presented a paper to the Royal Society on the structure of the placenta, in which he claimed for himself the honour of discovering the true mode of union between this organ and the uterus—a discovery which William Hunter claims as his own in this work. This led to a complete estrangement between the brothers, which continued until William was on his death-bed. A reconciliation then took place, but the latter did not, in consequence, alter that portion of his will by which he left the family estate in Scotland (he having succeeded to it) to his nephew, Dr Baillie, to the exclusion of his brother.

The engraver Strange (famous for his delicate execution) engraved two of the finest plates in the volume; and some of the others are remarkable for their beauty. William Hunter did not live to publish a work designed to illustrate the engravings and descriptive anatomy of the gravid uterus; but he left very ample materials for the purpose, which were edited in 1795 by Dr Baillie, and published in a thin quarto volume.

Dr John Fothergill having died, William Hunter succeeded him in January 1781, as president of the Medical Society. In the preceding year he had been elected one of the foreign associates of the Royal Medical Society of Paris; and in 1782 he received a similar mark of distinction from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris. In the following year he died.

About ten years before his death, William Hunter found his health so much impaired, that he proposed to recruit it by residing in Scotland, and was about to complete the purchase of a considerable estate, when the project was abandoned in consequence of a defect in the title. This ended his rural plans, and he thenceforth remained in London, suffering from repeated attacks of gout; it was this disease which terminated his life, notwithstanding his abstemious regimen. On Saturday the 15th of March 1783, after having for several days experienced a return of a wandering gout, he complained of great headache and nausea. In this state he went to bed, and for several days felt more pain than usual, both in his stomach and limbs. On the Thursday following he found himself so much recovered, that he determined to give the introductory lecture to the operations of surgery. It was to no purpose that his friends urged on him the impropriety of such an attempt. He was determined to make the experiment, and accordingly delivered the lecture; but towards the conclusion his strength was so exhausted that he fainted away, and was obliged to be carried to bed by two servants. During the night and the following day his symptoms were such as indicated danger; and on Saturday morning, Mr Combe, who made him an early visit, was alarmed on being told by Dr Hunter himself, that during the night he had certainly had a paralytic stroke. As neither his speech nor his pulse were affected, and he was able to raise himself in bed, Mr Combe encouraged him to hope that he was mistaken. But the event proved that Hunter's idea of his own complaint was but too well founded. He died on Sunday the 30th of March 1783. Turning to his friend Combe in his latter moments, he observed, "If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die."

William Hunter is described as being regularly shaped, slender, and rather below the middle height. He was an early riser, courteous, prudent, and economical. When he invited his younger friends to his table, they were seldom regaled with more than two dishes; when alone he rarely sat down to more than one; he would say, a man who cannot dine on this deserves to have no dinner. After the meal his servant (who was also the porter at the anatomical theatre), used to hand a single glass of wine to each of the guests. It was by the aid of such habits that William Hunter was enabled to devote L70,000 to the advancement of medical science.