John Hunter

“ His works were announced as the works of John Hunter; and John Hunter on a plain brass plate announced his residence. His honour and his pride made him look with contempt on the unworthy arts by which ignorant and greedy men advance their fortunes. He contemplated the hallowed duties of his art with the feelings of a philanthropist and a philosopher; and although surgery had been cultivated more than 2000 years, this single individual did more towards establishing it as a science, than all who preceded him. ”

“ Hunter, has represented him as an honest, independent, perfectly candid, and most industrious man, indifferent about money, and much attached to science. Now though I believe this sketch to be perfectly correct, yet there were finer traits of character requiring to be depicted ere I should recognise the intellectual resemblance of John Hunter. Those who make the study of nature, and of science, or the attainment of moral good, the ultimate object of their endeavours, are candid, disinterested, benevolent, and humble minded. ”

“ No man cared less for the profits of the medical profession, or more for the honor thereof, than the great Dr. John Hunter. He was honest, honorable, and simple in his every day life. His works, which contributed more to the science of medicine than any other writings during a thousand years, were simply announced as by John Hunter. A plain door plate, with the same name, announced his residence. Money was a secondary consideration to him. The following shows that he desired a professional brother to so consider it ”

“ John Hunter fancied it might be possible to prolong life indefinitely by placing a man in a very cold climate, and there subjecting him to periodical freezing. The man, he said, would perhaps live a thousand years, if, at the end of every ten years, he were frozen for a hundred, then thawed out at the end of the term for ten years more, and so continuously. "Like all inventors," Hunter adds, "I expected to make my fortune by this scheme, but an experiment completely undeceived me." ”

“ John Hunter, wife of the distinguished anatomist and physiologist, John Hunter, whose brother, William, founded the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. Her maiden name was Anne Home, and she was the eldest daughter of Robert Home of Greenlaw, in Berwickshire, a surgeon in the army. ”

“ John Hunter was as remarkable for his industry as for his talents, of which his museum alone forms a most extraordinary proof; and if we look around and contemplate the history of those men whose talents and acquirements we must esteem, we find that their superiority of knowledge has been the result of great labour and diligence. ”

“ In July 1771, Miss Home became the wife of John Hunter, the distinguished anatomist, to whom she bore two children. She afforded evidence of her early poetical talent, by composing, before she had completed her twenty-third year, the song beginning, "Adieu! ye streams that smoothly glide." This appeared in the Lark, an Edinburgh periodical, in the year 1765. In 1802, she published a collection of her poems, in an octavo volume, which she inscribed to her son, John Banks Hunter. ”

“ 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. ”

“ HUNTER, WILLIAM (1718–1783) , British physiologist and physician, the first great teacher of anatomy in England, was born on the 23rd of May 1718, at East Kilbride, Lanark. He was the seventh child of his parents, and an elder brother of the still more famous John Hunter (q.v.) . When fourteen years of age, he was sent to the university of Glasgow, where he studied for five years. He had originally been intended for the church, but, scruples concerning subscription arising in his mind, he followed the advice of his friend William Cullen, and resolved to devote himself to physic. ”

“ In the following year, when Lord Howe hoisted his flag on board the Queen Charlotte, Hunter obtained permission to serve with him as a volunteer, and in this capacity was present in the battle of 1 June 1794. He remained in the Queen Charlotte till early in 1795, when he was appointed governor of New South Wales, in succession to Phillip. Under the auspices of Hunter, himself an experienced and scientific navigator, the exploration of the coast line of Terra Australis made rapid progress, and to him must be assigned a share in the credit of the early discoveries of George Bass [q. v.] ”

“ In September his younger brother, John Hunter, arrived in London, learnt to dissect under him, and next year superintended his practical class. This connection lasted till 1759, during which period William Hunter's lectures gained fame for their eloquence and fulness, and for the abundance of practical illustration supplied. His success in obstetric practice led him to abandon surgery. In 1748 he was elected surgeon-accoucheur to the Middlesex, and in to the British Lying-in Hospital. ”

“ I came to this country to get well. I won’t get well, but I won’t allow myself to get into anything that will run me down quicker with worry. You knew it before you went in with me—and you agreed.”
That was the final word John Hunter felt as he tied the skittish brute he had just purchased in the stall beside the door, and turned to put the hay down from the loft above. The sound of plunging feet and snorts of wild terror when the hay fell into the manger turned his mind to the probable truth of Hugh’s opinion of the lately purchased horses. ”

“ The scope of Hunter’s labours may be defined as the explication of the various phases of life exhibited in organized structures, both animal and vegetable, from the simplest to the most highly differentiated. By him, therefore, comparative anatomy was employed, not in subservience to the classification of living forms, as by Cuvier, but as a means of gaining insight into the principle animating and producing these forms, by virtue of which he perceived that, however different in form and faculty, they were all allied to himself. In what does life consist? ”

“ He quite liked to swagger before these country people whom he chose otherwise to ignore. He was well dressed, his buggy was the admired of all admirers, and he was newly married. Country gossip had some pleasing qualifications. When he had arrived at Colebyville, however, John Hunter had found that country people had little ways of their own for the edification of the vainglorious, and that trim young men in buggies became infinitely more interesting to the scorned when they could be associated with scandal. ”

“ He arrived accordingly in the metropolis in September 1748, about a fortnight before the beginning of his brother’s autumnal course of lectures. After succeeding beyond expectation with the dissection of the muscles of an arm, he was entrusted with a similar part injected, and from the excellence of his second essay Dr Hunter predicted that he would become a good anatomist. Seemingly John Hunter had hitherto received no instruction in preparation for the special course of life upon which he had entered. ”

“ In one capital point he anticipated John Hunter (whose work appeared in 1786) , and described other pathological facts which have since been brought forward as novelties (see Proksch, Virchow's Jahresbericht der Medizin, 1879, i. 395) . A more conspicuous position, and possibly more self-confidence, were the only things wanting to make him famous. ”

“ You’d better get in as early as you can and look after it yourself. Those stable men don’t care for anything that ain’t their own.”
John Hunter stood speechless till the end of the story, and then helped tie the doctor’s team.
“That all comes from that miserable team! I’m glad one of them did have to be shot. I’ve half a notion to shoot the other one; it’s all cut up by the wire and ’ll take no end of trouble to cure. Hugh said horses and dogs talked with their tails, and I guess they do. Say, will you tell Elizabeth about the horse? ”

“ Hunter was convinced that life was not the result of organization; and though many may have conjectured life to be something not dependent on structure, Mr. Hunter was the first who deduced the opinion, as a legitimate consequence of legitimate facts, that life actually constructed the very means by which it carried on its various processes, and that it could operate in semifluid and even fluid substances. His intelligent mind further perceived that no system of physiology could be perfect that did not equally explain the morbid as well as the healthy actions of life. ”

“ Hunter’s life was one of continual exertion, perplexity, and irritation. He was constantly engaged in the search and consideration of new facts. “My mind,” said he to me, "is like a bee-hive and the simile struck me, on account of its correctness. For, in the midst of buz and apparent confusion, there was great order; regularity of structure; and abundant food, collected with incessant industry, from the choicest stores of nature.
It will be generally admitted, that the want of money would be an adequate cause of perplexity. ”

“ His early career is involved in obscurity. Wide acceptance has been given to Hunter's identification of the pastor with John Robinson who was admitted as a sizar at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, on 9 April 1592 (his tutor being John Jegon [q. v.] ) , who graduated B.A. in February 1596, and was admitted a fellow in 1598. The college books describe him variously as ‘Lincolniensis’ and ‘Notingamiensis,’ and Hunter conjectures that he was born at Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, divided from Nottinghamshire by the Trent ”

“ Hunter did not begin to learn anatomy till he was eighteen years of age; but when the book of nature lay exposed to his view, he read it with facility, interest, intelligence, and diligence; and the idle youth became a most industrious man. Like Haller, he devoted himself to physiology. ”

“ George’s Hospital, the conduct of his colleagues had provoked him; he made no observations, but retiring into another room, suddenly expired, October 16, 1793.
After these details no man will deny that John Hunter possessed high genius, and that he employed his talents nobly. He was indeed of a family of genius: his younger brother was cut off early, but not until he had given promise of eminence. Dr. Hunter was, in our opinion, equal in talents to John, the subject of this memoir, though his mind received early a different bias. And in the next generation the celebrated Dr. ”

“ Hunter’s character was evident in all his actions. He readily told all he knew or thought upon every subject ; and was pleased in assisting others to acquire knowledge. It is indeed highly improbable, that a wise and good man should be otherwise than candid. For wisdom teaches him not to form opinions but on sufficient grounds and consideration j and these he would freely reveal, being equally desirous that they should be corrected, if wrong, and acknowledged, if right. ”

“ Hunter was an humble-minded man, may be inferred from the caution and diffidence which is a striking characteristic of all his scientific investigations. He has, doubtless, suppressed the communication of facts and experiments, manifesting a degree of labour and intelligence sufficient to give reputation to persons of ordinary character. ”

“ With Hunter the case was widely different. By this time he was a rich man; and—what was of more consequence—actuated by the laudable ambition of making his wealth minister to the progress of the profession, in whose ranks the greater part of it had been earned. Accordingly, having set apart a sum sufficient to insure independence to his declining years, he proposed to expend a large amount of his hoarded treasure in the erection of an anatomical theatre, and to found a perpetual professorship; provided the Government would grant a proper site for a building. ”

“ H. Leigh Thomas records [27] that, on his first arrival in London, having by desire called on Hunter at five o’clock in the morning, he found him already busily engaged in the dissection of insects. Rigidly economical of time, Hunter was always at work, and he had always in view some fresh enterprise. To his museum he gave a very large share of his attention, being fearful lest the ordering of it should be incomplete at his death, and knowing of none who could continue his work for him. ”

“ James Hunter being a simple man, and without learnyng, and a Fletcher by occupation, so that he coulde be charged with no greate knowledge in Doctrine, yet because he often vsed the suspect companye of the rest, he was accused. ”

“ When Owen was appointed assistant-conservator of these collections thirty-four years had elapsed since Hunter’s death. During that time they had been preserved from damage by the devoted care of Mr William Clift, who, after being Hunter’s assistant for a short time, had been appointed conservator, first by the executors, and subsequently by the college. The general arrangement had been prescribed by Hunter, but no descriptive catalogue existed, as it had been, unfortunately, Hunter’s habit to trust to his memory for the history of his specimens. ”

“ Hunter’s physiological opinions, yet it seems proper to observe on the present occasion, that he was not satisfied with those of Haller, which he had heard delivered in his brother’s lectures; and therefore he examined every subject for himself. He seems also to have wrought like an ancient student, not striving for victory with others, but contending with the subject, and with himself. In the whole of his labours and reasonings, we may perceive a most diligent search for every fact belonging to the subject he was investigating, to form the basis on which he reasons ”