Thomas Hunter

“ JOHN HUNTER. A life and character like that of John Hunter has many claims upon the honourable remembrance of society; the more, because, for meritorious members of his profession, there is no other public reward than the general approbation of good men. We look upon him with that interest which genius successfully directed to good ends invariably excites; as one whose active labours in the service of mankind have been attended with useful consequences of great extent ”

“ Dr. William Hunter had at this time obtained celebrity as a teacher of anatomy. He won his way by very intelligible modes. His upright conduct and high mental cultivation gained him friends; and his professional merits were established by his lectures, which in extent and depth, as well as eloquence, surpassed any that had yet been delivered. There was a peculiar ingenuity in his demonstrations, and he had a happy manner exactly suited to his subject. The vulgar portion of the public saw no marks of genius in the successful exertions of Dr. Hunter ”

“ To generalize such irregularities, or, in other words, to show that they are not irregularities at all, was the main object of Hunter's life, and was the noblest part of his mission. Hence, notwithstanding his vast achievements in physiology, his favourite pursuit was pathology, [888] where, the phenomena being more complex, the intellect has more play. In this great field, he studied the aberrations of structure and of function, in the vegetable, as well as in the animal, world ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hunter's Livy—`Historiarum Libri quinque Priores'—which is still acknowledged to be valuable by competent authorities, appeared in 1822. The article 'Grammar' in the seventh edition of the ' Encyclopædia Britannica,' though not written by Hunter, was in large measure constructed from his teaching.
Hunter helped in municipal work at St. Andrews, and to him was largely due the introduction of the Pipeland water supply, which is still serviceable. He was an accomplished horticulturist, and a potato called after him the `Hunter kidney' was long a favourite in Scotland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hunter deserves much credit for good work in demonstrating the course of the lymphatics and their absorbing powers. In reference to the controversy with the Monros, see also ' Observations, Physiological and Anatomical,' by A. Monro secundus, Edinburgh, 1758. Hunter assigned a comparatively low place to William Harvey as a discoverer, alleging that so much had been discovered before that little was left for him to do but 'to dress it up into a system ' (Introductory Lectures, p. 47) .
As a collector of coins, medals, &c., Hunter showed considerable judgment and great acquisitiveness. ”

“ An earnest preacher of the gospel and a devoted missionary, he will be specially remembered as an experienced scientist and a skilful lexicographer. Besides the works already mentioned, Hunter published: 1. 'History of India,' 1863. 2. 'History of the Missions of the Free Church of Scotland in India and Africa,' 1873.
[Information chiefly from the Rev. "W. Hume Elliot, Ramsbottom, by whom a memoir of Hunter is to be published shortly; in the Brit. Mus. Cat. Hunter's works are ascribed to two different persons.] ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hunter’s papers and greater works exhibit an extraordinary mind: he startles the reader by conclusions, the process by which they were reached being scarcely discernible. We attribute this in part to that defective education, which made him fail in explaining his own thoughts, and the course of reasoning by which he had arrived at his conclusions. The depth of his reflective powers may be estimated by the perusal of his papers on the apparently drowned, and on the stomach digested after death by its own fluids. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In 1790–1 he lectured for Hunter, and in 1792 definitely succeeded him as lecturer on anatomy. He was elected surgeon to St. George's Hospital after Hunter's death in 1793, was joint executor with Dr. Baillie to Hunter's will, and in 1793–4 he saw through the press Hunter's important work ‘On the Blood, Inflammation, and Gunshot Wounds.’ Home obtained a large surgical practice, and became keeper and afterwards one of the trustees of the Hunterian collection (1817) . ”

“ Hunter, Dr. Fordyce, Sir Joseph Banks, Dr. Solander, Dr. Maskelyne, Sir George Shuckburgh, Sir Henry Englefield, Sir Charles Blagden, Mr. Ramsden, and Mr. Watt. To be the associate of such men could not but have a good effect on a mind like Hunter’s, active and vigorous, but deficient in general acquirement, and concentrated upon one pursuit.
At this time, and for many years afterwards, he was employed in the most curious physiological inquiries; and at the same time forming that museum, which remains the most surprising proof both of his genius and perseverance. ”

“ In a work, which was written by a surgeon only the year after Hunter died, the reader is told, in regard to his remarkable inquiries respecting animal heat, that ‘his experiments, if they be true, carry with them no manner of information:—if they be true, no effect for the benefit of man can possibly be derived from them.’ Foot's Life of Hunter, London, 1794, p. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Later he went to Jamaica as staff surgeon, whence he returned in August 1784, and went on half-pay. He resumed his assistancy with Hunter, was elected fellow of the Royal Society in 1785, and in 1788 received the gold medal of the Lyceum Medicum Londinense (a society founded by Hunter and Dr. George Fordyce [q. v.] ) for a dissertation on the ‘Properties of Pus.’ In 1786 he took charge of Hunter's patients while Hunter was ill, and lived in Hunter's house from this time till 1792, when he married and removed to a few doors off. In 1787 Home was appointed assistant surgeon under Hunter at St. ”

“ Hunter was twice married: first to Elizabeth Miln, by whom he had a family of seventeen children; and, secondly, to Margaret Hadow, daughter of Professor Hadow of St. Andrews. All his family save one reached manhood. His eldest son, James Hunter, became professor of logic at St. ”

“ This tract has been considered as a very masterly 14performance, and was the occasion of the author being elected to the fellowship of the Royal Society. It is not a little remarkable that Mr. Hunter, like Jenner’s friends at Alveston, thought so doubtfully of his views on the subject of vaccination, that he cautioned him against publishing them, lest they should interfere with the fame he had acquired in the learned world by his ‘Essay on the Cuckoo.’ But the event proved that the caution, though well meant, was unnecessary. ”

“ Besides pursuing the divinity course he studied French and Italian so successfully as to be able to teach those languages to fellow-students, and he became tutor in several families of distinction. The acquaintance of two medical men, Moore and Montgomery, led Cruikshank to discard theology and become Moore's medical pupil; and when Dr. William Hunter had separated from Hewson in 1770 and wrote to Glasgow for another assistant, Cruikshank was nominated by the college through Moore's influence. ”

“ When Thomas Warton, in the Appendix to the Life of Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, Oxford, and also the founder of the family of Pope, Earls of Downe, with whom [Pg 17] Pope claimed kindred, enters on the consideration of this question, he admits the probability that such a relationship existed, but professes his utter inability to ascend beyond the father, in pursuit of the Poet’s ancestors. The attempt to do so has been made by others, who have brought far less of antiquarianism into literary history than Warton. ”

“ Literary biography owes much to the Wartons—more than the present writers in this department seem disposed to acknowledge; and it is to a Warton, not Thomas, but his brother, Dr. Joseph Warton, that we owe the hint upon which I have proceeded, and, as I believe, settled the question for ever.
Dr. Warton, we have seen, in his Essay on the Genius and Writings of Pope, 1780, vol. ii., informs us, that he learned from Dr. Bolton, Dean of Carlisle, that he had heard from a Mr. Potenger, a cousin of Pope, that Pope’s grandfather was a clergyman of the Church of England living in Hampshire. ”

“ But in these pursuits especially it is true that labour is its own reward: and he found a generous patron in Thomas Lord Fairfax, who allowed him an anual stipend to enable him the better to pursue his inquiries, and, what perhaps he valued more, rocured him access to many public and private collections of records. His industry was answerable to his patron's liberality. Ever witness for him that great national work the Monasticon Anglicanum, the labour of which, Sir William Dugdale would have been the first to allow, rested principally on his coadjutor Dodsworth. ”

“ 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 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. ”

“ 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. ”