Richard Hunter

“ I'll hasten and give word to Kyne."
Flying back straight towards the Red Court, he had leaped the railings when he encountered Richard Thornycroft, who seemed to be flying along with equal speed towards the plateau. Hunter seized his arm.
"Richard Thornycroft! Mr. Richard! the smugglers are at work! I have dropped upon them. Their signal has been hoisted beyond the rocks underneath."
"What?" roared Richard.
"It is true as that we are breathing here," continued Hunter. "I went on the plateau, and I saw their light--a flaming torch as big as your head. They are preparing to run the goods. ”

“ And come back again! Richard Thornycroft could have staked his life, had the question occurred to him, that Hunter would not come back: he never supposed any living man, calling himself a gentleman, could be guilty of so great treachery. But the doubt never presented itself to him for a moment.
What then was his astonishment, as he ran swiftly and stealthily (escaping the sight of Sarah Ford, owing, no doubt, to her crouching posture on the stone, and the black apron on her head) up the plateau, to see Robert Hunter? He was at its edge, at the corner farthest from the village ”

“ We are all getting on in years, and are, I hope, setting our faces homewards. My life is, at the very most, more than half over, even supposing that I should live to be old. And how many chances there are against that! This time thirty-seven years ago I was a small thing. How much smaller in one sense shall I be thirty-seven years hence! How much greater, we may hope, in another!'
In 1838, Richard being then sixteen, the Hayes family went abroad for a couple of years. The first year they spent in Paris, the tutor and governess living as usual in the house. ”

“ Of all the places in the immediate vicinity of Sheffield which formed the terra of their ancestor, Kimberworth is the only manor in which I have found the family of De Busli exercising acts of ownership. About the year 1160, Richard de Busli, with the consent of Emma his wife and his heirs, granted to the monks of Kirkstead in Lincolnshire sufficient land in that manor for the erection of four iron-works, forgias, two for smelting the ore, and two ad fabricandum, for forming it into bars, with liberty to dig the ore in any part of the manor [4] . ”

“ It is just possible, though hardly probable, that we may ascend a generation above this Lancelot; for, on January 20, 1626, the will of Robert Turner, of Towthroppe, was proved in the court of the Archbishop of York: its date does not appear. He desires to be buried in the churchyard at Huntingdon. He gives to his son Anthony the two younger oxen, with certain husbandry utensils; to his son Richard the red whie, which came from Stockton; and to his grandchild, William Turner, the little brown whie. He makes his wife and his younger son executors. ”

“ In that retired part of the parish of Ecclesfield where it adjoins the manor of Kimberworth, a religious solitary took up his abode. His example seems to have been followed by others, till at length a hermitage became established in this place, which was dedicated to Saint John the Baptist, for obvious reasons the patron of the desert-religionist. The first William de Lovetot settled certain lands upon the hermitage and its inhabitant, and to this gift his son Richard made a small addition. ”

“ As local economy leads to no local advantage, the stimulus to avoid waste is reduced to a minimum. So as no local growth of the income leads to an increase of the local means of improvement, the interest in developing the public revenues is also brought down to the lowest level.' It is right to add that the reforms by which Lord Mayo put an end to this unprofitable state of things were in a large measure due to the initiative of General Richard Strachey, supported by the administrative authority and experience of his brother, Sir John Strachey. ”

“ He makes his children, Richard Newton and Christopher Newton, executors; and his brother Leonard Beckwith, and George Mallory, supervisors. Proved at York, by Richard Newton only, April 8, 1605.
Richard was the testator’s son by his first wife, Eleanor, daughter of Thomas Collins. Christopher and Henry were the sons of his second wife, Jane Beckwith. According to the pedigree of the Newtons, recorded at the visitation of 1585, the grandmother of Miles Newton, was one of the distinguished family of Roos, of Ingmanthorpe. ”

“ The discovery of the Roman tablets in Riveling renders it, however, highly probable that very soon after the Romans brought this island under their dominion, a municipal colony of Roman legionaries became settled within the manor of Hallam. Of this more hereafter. In the map of Roman roads in Yorkshire given in Eboracum, one is laid down through the midst of the parish of Sheffield,—on what authority does not appear, for it is certain that no traces of it are now discoverable. The eighteenth Iter of Richard of Cirencester skirted, if it did not enter, the parish of Sheffield. ”

“ Another American author, of no mean fame, was his fellow-lodger. He held free intercourse with all Americans who came to London. He sought their society, and, in the height of his power, he loved to exercise it in their behalf, and to their advantage.
In dress, Hunter adopted the simplest garb of a gentleman; in conversation, he was peculiar. He said little till excited; he then spoke rapidly, and often as if delivering an oration. He was accustomed to inveigh against civilized society,—its luxuries and its vices,—and to paint in glowing hues the pleasures and virtues of savage life. ”

“ In 1869 he was appointed professor of Roman law at University College, London, and in 1878 professor of jurisprudence, resigning that chair in 1882. His name became well known during this period as the author of a standard work on Roman law, Roman Law in the Order of a Code, together with a smaller introductory volume for students, Introduction to Roman Law. After 1882 Hunter took up politics and was elected to parliament for Aberdeen as a Liberal in 1885. ”

“ As a boy Hunter showed little taste for books, loved country sports, and being allowed to neglect school never overcame the defects of his education. When about seventeen he went to stay in Glasgow with his sister, Mrs. Buchanan, whose husband, a cabinet-maker, was in difficulties. Hunter helped him for some time in his trade, and acquired much mechanical skill. In his twentieth year he visited his brother William (1718-1783) [q. v.] in London, with a view to assisting in his dissecting room. He travelled on horseback in September 1748, and was set to work on a dissection of the arm-muscles. ”

“ In the year 1860, the remains of John Hunter were removed from the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields and placed in Westminster Abbey, to rest with the dust of England’s most famous sons. The Council of the Royal College of Surgeons erected a tablet bearing a suitable inscription.
Mrs. Hunter retired from society after the death of her husband, and found much enjoyment in literature. She had two children, a son [Pg 166] and a daughter. On the 7th January, 1821, she died in London after a lingering illness, being nearly eighty years of age. ”

“ In 1793 he became a pupil at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and on May 30 he had a paper read to the Royal Society on the ‘Structure of the Crystalline Lens,’ which he thought to be muscular. Hunter claimed the discovery as his, and was only prevented by death from giving the Croonian lecture at the Royal Society in proof of his right. Sir E. Home, in the Croonian lecture the following year, stated that neither Young nor Hunter was right.
In 1794 (æt. 21) he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
About this time the Duke of Richmond, at Bath, thus wrote to Dr. Brocklesby:
Bath, May 5, 1794. ”

“ It was “without the solace of sympathy or encouragement of approbation, without collateral assistance,”30 and careless of achieving fame—for he held that “no man ever was a great man who wanted to be one”—that Hunter laboured to perfect his designs, and established the science of comparative anatomy, and principles which, however neglected in his lifetime, became the ground-work of all medical study and teaching.
In accordance with the directions given by Hunter in his will, his collection was offered for purchase to the British government. ”

“ 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. ”

“ His strong belief that life was a principle of force separate from and anterior to organisation was never clearly and consistently put forward; but it was raised by his pupils into a dogma, especially by Abernethy, and was an important subject of controversy before modern chemical and physical discoveries had given precision to physiological ideas. One of Hunter's most distinctive merits was his grasp of living beings in one view, as one science. He was an all-round naturalist with an object, that of explaining life and organisation, and discovering principles of surgery. ”

“ Some of the masters closed their works without a word of explanation to their men: in one sense it was not needed, for the men knew of the measure beforehand. Mr. Hunter chose to assemble them together, and state what he was about to do. Somewhat of his old energy appeared to have been restored to him for the moment, as he stood before them and spoke—Austin Clay by his side.
'You have brought it upon yourselves,' he said, in answer to a remark from one who boldly, but respectfully, asked whether it was fair to resort to a lock-out, and so punish all alike, contents and non-contents. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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 ”

“ The ‘Observations' were at first intended for the Royal Society; but objections were made by a geological friend to his use of language which implied that the earth was more than six thousand years old, and he consequently did not send in the paper to the society.
Hunter's works, and especially his posthumous papers, contain numerous psychological remarks, exhibiting much originality and shrewdness, without evidence of systematic study.
Hunter designed his museum to illustrate the entire phenomena of life in all organisms, in health and disease. Its essential plan was physiological. ”

“ In 1762 he served with the British army in Portugal, and acquired an extensive knowledge of gunshot wounds and inflammation, pursuing at the same time his study of human anatomy and of the physiology of hibernating animals.
Returning to London on half-pay in 1763, Hunter started in practice as a surgeon in Golden Square, and soon formed a private class for anatomy and operative surgery; but owing to his ineffective delivery and exposition, his pupils never numbered more than twenty. He also took resident pupils. ”

“ The correctness of the account contained in his book of his origin, and early adventures, is denied in the United States, and Hunter has been denounced, by their periodical publications, as an adventurer who imposed upon the credulity of the British public, by representing himself as the hero of a romance of his own creation. ”

“ He never took fees from curates, authors, or artists. His income, which first reached 1,000l. in 1774, was 5,000l. for some years later, and 6,000l. before his death. He often sent valuable patients to young men starting in practice, and gave promising men tickets for his lectures.
As an investigator, original thinker, and stimulator of thought, Hunter stands at the head of British surgeons. His originality was equally evidenced in the devising of crucial experiments and in his prevision of truths which he could not have learned from others or by direct observation. ”