A HISTORY OF MEDICINE
animals, birds, and fishes, and there he conducted many experi-
ments and dissections. In 1773 there occurred the first attack of
angina pectoris, from which disease John Hunter died twenty
years later. There can be no doubt that he also suffered from
cerebral syphilis, contracted as the result of a foolhardy inocula-
tion of himself in order to ascertain whether syphilis and gonorrhoea
were the same disease.1 He died suddenly at a meeting of the
governors of St. George's Hospital, to which institution he had
been surgeon for some years. His body rested in St. Martin's
Church until 1859, when it was re-interred in Westminster Abbey
at the instance of Frank Buckland.2
John Hunter made no great discovery, yet in a sense he was
the originator of many discoveries. His writings are full of fresh
observations which pointed the way for other pioneers.3 His
great collection in the Royal College of Surgeons' Museum has
recently been destroyed by enemy action, but the name of John
Hunter will always remain one of the greatest in the history
of surgery.
Pupils and Contemporaries of John Hunter
John Hunter had many pupils who achieved fame ; among
them were the distinguished London surgeons, Abernethy and
Astley Cooper, and the first great American surgeon, Philip
Syng Physick.
JOHN ABERNETHY (i764-i83i),4 who was born in London of
Scots-Irish parentage, succeeded Pott as surgeon to St. Bartho-
lomew's Hospital, and fell heir to much of the practice of his
teacher, John Hunter. He was a clear and dramatic lecturer,
very popular with his students. In practice, he adopted a brusque
and even rough manner with his patients, and many stories are
told to illustrate this peculiarity.
" Live on sixpence a day, and earn it," was his advice to a
luxurious alderman. Another patient, a hypochondriac, he sent
to consult a fictitious Dr. Robertson of Inverness. Fear of the
unknown verdict on the northward journey, combined with
anger against Abernethy as he returned, made the patient forget
his ills and completed the cure.
1 D'Arcy Power, "John Hunter, a Martyr to Science*" in Selected Writings, 1931
a Frank Buckland, Curiosities of Natural History* 4 vols., 1866, vol. iv. p. 159
1 Morley Roberts, "John Hunter and Evolution,'* Med, Press cwddrc., 1909, May 29
and June 5 and 12
* Sir B. W. Richardson, Disciples of Aesculapius, 2 vols.s 1896, vol. ii. p. 786