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WILLIAM HUNTER.
lane medical library u»
sta:.;ford university
310 FASTcUR R0A9
PALO ALTO. CALIFORNIA
Ik
WILLIAM HUNTER.
r . '
" 7o acquire knowledge^ and to communicate it to others^ has been the
pleasure^ the husinesB^ and the ambition of my life" — W. Hunter.
iAH£ MEDICAL immr
STANFORD UNiVERolTY
300 PASTcUR ROAJ
PALO ALTO, CALIFORNIA
WILLIAM HUNTER,
ANATOMIST, PHYSICIAN, OBSTETRICIAN,
(1718-1783),
WITH NOTICES OF HIS FRIENDS
CULLEN, SMELLIE, FOTHERGILL,
AND BAILLIE.
• • •
• «
• • • •
• • •
•• • •
• • •
• ••
BY
R. KINGSTON FOX,
M.D., BRUX. ; M.R.C.P., LOND.
. . <"••" »»#»r»s*«»ii-»*n»» -wir • ■■■ — >-.— i ki^i
1 ,
■1
■
I
WlAfrU 'A»^
J
London :
H. K. LEWIS, 136, GOWER STREET, W.C.
1901.
LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY
• -• '
.•• ••• •
• • • •
••• •••••
• • • • * • •
• • • ••
^bSntkrs,* * * *
LONDON AND ASHPORD, KENT.
• • •
• • • • •
Ntroduotory note.
t this work formed the Oration delivered
feriau Society in LondoD, on Febraar; lOtb,
fished in its Tranaactione ; a portion also
e of the Lancet for February 20th.
of the Society the Oration ie now re-
HDaiilerable additions.
ksBn a labour of love, continued at intervals
i years. The author's aim has been to give
9 of the life, works and place in Medical
lose fame has been too often eclipsed by
r brother, the great John Hunter.
K|itirt has been long in type, some want of
ieontinnity has been found to be inevitable,
r haa sought to atone by providing a full
I index.
CONTENTS.
Oration.
PAGS
William Hunter, Lecturer on Anatomy 1
His Origin, Family and Early History 2
The Medical Leaders in 1746 5
Outline of William Hunter's life in London — Invites his brother
John to join him — Attendance on the Queen — Letter to Lord
Suffolk — Hunter's Museum — His Controversies, especially
with John Hunter — Honours — Death of William Hunter,
1783 6-15
William Hunter as Anatomist — A candid Observer of Nature —
His Discoveries — His great work on the Gravid Uterus — The
Great Windmill Street School of Anatomy — Training of
John Hunter 15-20
William Hunter as Physician — His Medical papers — Hunter on
Natural Selection 21-23
William Cullen 23
John Fothergill 25
Matthew Baillie — His "Morbid Anatomy," an epoch-making book 26-29
William Hunter as Obstetrician — Rise of Man-Midwifery - - 29
William Smellie — His relations with Hunter, and "Letter of
Exculpation" — Hunter's services to Midwifery - - -29-32
William Hunter's Personal Character 32
Epoch of Hunter's Death — Conclusion 33-34
Appendix.
The Hunterian Museum^ Glasgow. — Description by Prof. J. Young
of the Departments : Anatomical, Zoological, Minerals,
Ethnology, Bibliographic, Manuscripts, Artistic, Coins — Coin
Catalogues — Disposition of the Museum — Hunter's Trustees :
Fordyce, Pitcairn, and Combe — History of the Collection —
Recent Catalogues 35-41
CONTENTS. vii.
William Hunter* 8 Works. — ** Anatomy of the Human Gravid
Uterus " — " Anatomical Description *' of the same, a post-
humous work — Dr. Lee on the Nerves of the Uterus —
Hunter on Ovariotomy and on the Sigaultean Operation —
Discovery of the structure of the Placenta — Jesse Foofs
libels — Hunter's famous tract on Infanticide — Darwin's
reference to Hunter — " Medical Commentaries " — Hunter's
antagonists, Monro and Pott — Example of Hunter's caustic
temper — " Introductory Lectures" to his course on Anatomy
— Outline of their contents — His high view of his Art, and
chivalrous devotion as a Teacher of it — Anecdote from
Horace Walpole — Plan for establishing a Teaching Academy
in London, and its failure — Papers read before the Royal
Society — Rowley's letters assailing Hunter — On the Art of
Embalming — Uncompleted works, and manuscripts of his
Lectures 42-55
List of William Hunter's Works. — (A) Published works, (B)
Papers read before the Royal Society, (C) Papers read before
the Medical Society of Physicians, (D) Other contributions
and Manuscript works 56-59
Biography. — ^Notice of the Memoirs of his life, and of other
sources of information respecting William Hunter - - 60-62
Portraits of William Hunter. — Account of all examples that are
known to exist 63-65
Long Caldei'wood. — Birthplace of the Hunters - ... - 66
John Fothergill. — Two Letters from him to William Hunter,
with notes and comments — Fothergill's writings — Anthony
Fothergill — John Milner Fothergill — The Fothergillian Medal
of the Medical Society of London 67-71
Addenda. — Dorothea Baillie — W. Hunter's membership of the
Corporation of Surgeons — W. Hunter's Funeral - - - 72
Index , , . . . 73
LIST OF ILLUSTKATIONS.
Portrait of William Hunter, after Keynolds. See p. 63. Frontispiece,
Chronological Chart of his Life and Times - - Opposite page v.
Medallion Portrait of W. Hunter 1
Portrait of William Cullen. See p. 1, footnote - - - - 23
Portrait of John Fothergill. See p. 1, footnote - - - 25
Portrait of Matthew Baillie. (Taken by permission of the Editor
of The Practitioner from a print of Hoppner's well known
portrait) 26
Portrait of William Smellie. See p. 1, footnote - - - 29
Portrait of William Hunter, after Chamberlen. See p. 64. - 63
Long Calderwood, Birthplace of the Hunters ... - 66
ERRATA.
Page 6. Line 12 from bottom, omit " Soemmering and."
Page 8. Last paragraph but one, read, " Hunter's first communication
to the Royal Society was made as early as 1743," etc.
See p. 63.
Page 12. Line 2, for " 1765," read ** about 1763." See p. 52.
Page 21. Line 9 from bottom, for •' 1812 " read " 1784."
Page 22. Line 3, after " whole " insert " periphery."
Page 23. Footnote, omit " (C) "
Page 26. Line 17, The sum for which Hunter purchased Fothergiirs
shells, etc., is variously stated. Lettsom states it as in the
text. Simmons and Nichols give £1,200 ; Da Costa, £1,000.
It was to be £500 less than the valuation.
Page 26. Footnote, omit " (B)."
Page 27. Line 4, for " twenty " read '* thirty "
Faj^e 30. Line 19, omit " probably."
^•N^^-.
LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
MEDICAL CEmiR
STAMFORD, C^a^."i^■2.^^
Wtlliani t>untec.
WILLIAM HUNTER.
Mr. President, and Fellows of the Hunterian
Society,
I have thought that I could most fitly dischargee the duty
which your kindness has laid upon me this evening, by
bringing before you the life of one worthy of your honour,
William Hunter, elder brother of John Hunter, after whom
this Society is named.
WILLIAM HUNTER, LECTURER ON ANATOMY.
In the London Evening Post for January 9th to 12th,
1746, there was to be read an advertisement in the following
terms: — "On Monday the 1st of February, at 5 in the
afternoon, will begin A Course of Anatomical Lectures. To
which will be added, the Operations of Surgery, with the
application of Bandages. By William Hunter, Surgeon.
Gentlemen may have an Opportunity of learning the Art of
Dissecting, during the whole Winter Season, in the same
Manner as in Paris."
This announcement followed the custom of that day, by
combining within the scope of one course of lectures.
Anatomy, the operations of Surgery, and the application of
bandages. The lectures were commonly given at the house
*«* The portrait of 'William Hunter is taken from an unpublished medallion in the
Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, by kind permission of Professor J. Young. That of Cullenis
tnm. an engraving by Ridley. 1803. That of Fothergill is reduced from the fine plate by
Bartolosd, prefixed to the third volume of his works, by Lettsom, 1784. Dr. Olaist^ kindly
pennitted a similar reduction from the photogravure of SmelUe (taken from an oil painting)
wbidi adorns bis life.
2 WILLIAM HUNTER.
of the lecturer, or in some convenient room elsewhere : but
Nourse in 1737 set a novel precedent by holding his classes
at St. Bartholomew's Hospital itself, " designing " he says in
his advertisement, "to have no more lectures at my own
house" : his syllabus in 1748 included totam rem anatomicam
in 23 lectures, — so limited was the knowledge of anatomy in
those days. Later, in 1772, we find Dr. Saunders, and in
1776, Mr. Else, lecturing in the theatres of Guy's and St.
Thomas's Hospitals respectively, but it was long before the
custom of lecturing on the Hospital premises became usual.
Thus Dr. James Haddocks, Physician to the London Hospital,
lectured on the theory and practice of medicine in 1772, " in
a large room in the Hotel, No. 5, Capel Court, opposite the
Bank, in Bartholomew Lane." But the advertisement of
lectures by Mr., afterwards Sir William, Blizard, and Mr.
Thomas Blizard, in 1797, mentions their delivery in the
Theatre of the London Hospital.
It was the retirement of Samuel Sharpe, Surgeon to Guy's
Hospital, from his engagement of delivering an annual
course of lectures before a Society of Naval Practitioners in
Covent Garden, which made way for young William Hunter
to take his place. Thus commenced his lecturing career in
London, a career which lasted nearly forty years, and
terminated only with his death.
William Hunter was at this time twenty-eight years of
age, rather short of stature and slight in build, with delicate,
almost feminine features, a refined, expressive face, and a
certain notable brightness of the eyes. His address was
pleasing, his words clear and precise, and he was fertile in
illustration and humour.^ He wore the wig, at that period
in great use, even by boys at school who belonged to the
well-to-do classes.
ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY.
William Hunter had been five years in London. He was
the seventh child of a large family, John Hunter being the
tenth and youngest, born in the old house, yet standing, of
Long Calderwood in Lanarkshire. Of this family, four died
in childhood at 1, 3, 14, and 17 years, and three at 25, 30, and
36 years of age — two of these from phthisis, and probably
1 **His dialect had all the polish of the Southern metropolis, with enough of the
Northern redtatiye to preserve the close of his sentences from too abrupt a oadenoe,"
Adams, Memoirs of J. Hunter, p. 118,
FAMILY HISTORY. 3
others from tubercular affections,^ one being James, a young
anatomist of much promise : whilst three only lived beyond
middle life — William, who died, gouty, at 65 ; John, died
with aneurysm of the aorta, also at 65 ; and Dorothy, the
mother of Matthew Baillie.
If as a family however, they enjoyed poor vitality, such
members as lived were endowed with energy, industry, and
talent far beyond the common lot of man. It is not without
interest to follow the history of the stock a little farther.
Of the ten sons and daughters, only two, John and Dorothy,
left issue. Of John's children, two died young, two lived,
but died without issue. Of the talented children of Dorothy
Baillie, one, Matthew Baillie, never robust, died worn out
at 62, leaving a son and daughter; the other two lived
unmarried to 100 years or near it.
Extraordinary powers of mind are not uncommonly
associated with a like strength of body, leading to pro-
longed old age, but the possession of genius is not favourable
to the perpetuation of the species.^
The shadow of death, which had so often darkened the
home at Long Calderwood, seems to have endeared the
survivors to one another. Affectionate letters between the
brothers and sister have been preserved : although in the
youngest brother, John, the family bond was not so strong.
The father of the Hunters was a man of high character,
and made many sacrifices to advance his children : his
anxious disposition kept him, we are told, often awake at
night, pondering his cares. He writes shortly before his
death to his son William, who had had an offer of work in
London, that nothing had proved a greater comfort to them
all than the hopes of seeing him : — " I surely must soon
expect to (leave this) side of time, considering my age and
present Indisposition, being (for some) days past confined
to my bed with sickness, and a severe fitt of (the) gravel,
and would be glad to have you near me for the little while
1 Mr. W. Hunter-Baillie (who died 1894, aged 96 years), son of Dr. Matthew Baillie,
used to say that those who died young died of consumption.
2 Descendants of Archibald, only paternal uncle of the Hunters, still exist ; several
have been in the medical profession. His grandson, the late Dr. William Hunter, of
Largs, studied at the Great Windmill Street School, and became an army surgeon, being
present at Waterloo. He married a sister of Sir David Wilkie, and died about 1874, aged
over 80 years. Dr. William Hunter, J.P., of Rothesay, who died in 1893, was grand-nephew
and heir to the latter, and has left children to inherit certain Hunterian heirlooms :
another {;rand-nephew is Dr. Charles BucJianaB Hunter, of Secund^ral^, India.
4 WILLIAM HUNTER
(I may) be in this world, tho' at y« same time, I shoald be
sorry to hinder you (from) making your way in the world
the best way you can. I wish you (to) consider well what
you do."i
William Hunter went, at the age of thirteen, to the
University of Glasgow. His father intended him for the
Church, but his enquiring mind did not readily accom-
modate itself to the unyielding tenets of the Presbytery.
He became acquainted with William Cullen, then in medical
practice in the town of Hamilton, a man eight years his
senior in age ; and spent three years residing as a pupil in
his house, until he was 22 years old. They were, he tells
us, the happiest of his life.
Hunter's choice of the profession of medicine was one
result of this residence with Cullen. Another result was a
lifelong friendship between the two Scotsmen. In an
age when near relatives addressed each other as " Dear Sir,"
Cullen and Hunter are " My dear Willie," or " My dear old
Friend," and the letters which have been preserved, for they
seldom met in after life, form a valuable source of our
knowledge of Hunter's true character.^
After a winter spent in Edinburgh attending the classes
of Dr. Alexander Monro and others, William Hunter came,
in the year 1741, to London. The journey was made by sea,
and in the voyage from Leith they encountered a severe
storm, and were in much peril of shipwreck.
He seems to have had but few introductions to the metro-
polis. The first was to Smellie, and at his house, or rather
apothecary's shop in Pall Mall, he stayed for some time,
William Smellie was like himself, an able, active, young
Scotchman, ambitious of a wider scope for his abilities.
Smellie and Hunter both became leaders in Obstetric
Medicine in London. We shall have to compare their
careers later on.
Another of Hunter's introductions was to Dr. James Douglas,
the anatomist, and this proved of great value and importance
to him. Douglas was an original worker of no mean repute ;
he is known familiarly to us all as the discoverer of Douglas's
pouch, and he made likewise new and intimate dissections
1 Hunter-Baillie MSS., Boy. Coll. Surg., vol. I., p. 58.
2 See TbonuKm's Life of Oollen, toI. I., appendix.
COMES TO LONDON. 6
of the peritoneum and its cavities. He was also an accoucheur,
and is referred to in the lines : —
'' There all the learned shall at the labour stand,
And Douglas lend his soft obstetric hand/*
Douglas was now approaching old age, and needing some
help in his anatomical work. He discerned the abilities of
young Hunter, and proposed to him to enter his household,
acting as tutor to his son, and assisting himself.
Hunter, who was seeking for the means of a livelihood,
accepted the offer, and lived with Dr. Douglas until he died
next year, and then continued to reside with the widow and
family. His relations with thenl were kind and intimate :
Douglas expired, wrote Hunter to his mother, with his
hand locked in his own.^ In the meantime. Hunter attended
the classes of Nicholls, another famous anatomist, and was
surgeon's pupil at St. George's Hospital, then recently
founded. It is not unlikely that as Cullen had inclined him
to medicine, and Smellie had interested him in obstetrics,
so it was Douglas who fostered in his mind the liking for
anatomy.
It is as anatomist, physician, and obstetrician, that I desire
to bring Hunter before you this evening.
MEDICAL LEADERS IN 1746.
And here let us pause to consider who were the leaders
of medical science 150 years ago.
Sydenham, the English Hippocrates, had been dead for
over half a century ; Radcliffe for thirty years, and Dr.
Richard Mead, his successor, was now the leading medical
luminary in London. A coach and six carried Mead from
his country seat near Windsor to a town house, situated
where the National Hospital for Epilepsy now stands,
and in its galleries the Maecenas of medicine had
gathered a library and museum of art which were famous
throughout Europe. Freind was dead, as was the accom-
plished Arbuthnot, but Sir Hans Sloane was yet living at a
great age, physician to the King, and the possessor of a large
collection of the curiosities of nature and art, destined to
form the nucleus of the British Museum. Huxham, who
1 Hunter-Baillie MSS., II.| 3. W. Hunter paid his addresses to Miss Douglas, but she
died early.
6 WILLIAM flUNTElR
had been a pupil of Boerhaave at Leyden, was in active work
at Plymouth ; his tincture of bark yet holds its place in our
pharmacopoeia.
The most distinguished anatomist and surgeon was
William Cheselden, now approaching old age. Percival
Pott was in the early years of his work at St. Bartholomew's
Hospital.
Looking abroad, eight years only had passed since the
illustrious Boerhaave died at Leyden — animum vix quisquam
diviniorem, omnium amantem — yet in the person of faithful
pupils, such as Haller, then at Gottingen, De Haen, and
Van Swieten, the great eclectic physician lived on, and the
impetus he had given to the rational culture of the art of
healing and its emancipation from the trammels of tradition
was borne to many lands. The leading physicians in Edin-
burgh were disciples of Boerhaave, as were our own Mead
and Huxham and many more. Friedrich Hoffmann and
Stahl, in some sense rivals of Boerhaave, and each founders
of a system or doctrine of medicine, were also dead.
The great anatomists of the two previous centuries,
such as Vesalius, Fallopius, our own Glisson, Valsalva,
Malpighi, and Bidloo, had left some successors. Ruysch, of
Amsterdam, famous for his beautiful preparations, was not
long dead ; Petit, of Paris, was yet living, though old, whilst
Albinus, another pupil of Boerhaave, who occupied the
chair of anatomy at Leyden for the long term of fifty years,
was at the height of his reputation and activity.
In the department of pathology the science of morbid
anatomy had been created by Soemmerring and Morgagni.^
The latter was already old, but he lived many years yet,
untiring in his dissections, and lecturing to his class at
Padua to extreme old age. He published his great work,
" De Sedibus et Causis Morborum," in 1761.
The science of botany was taking its first form and order
under the genius of Linnaeus, at this time at the height of
his fame, Professor of Medicine at Upsal, and Superintendent
of the Botanic Garden.
OUTLINE OF WILLIAM HUNTER'S LIFE.
We now return to William Hunter, entered upon his
career as a lecturer on anatomy. He was so generous in
^ - , ^
1 Der Begrunder der Neuen Pathologischen ^natomte.— Haeser.
INVITES JOHN HUNTER TO LONDON. 7
helping his friends from the fees he had received, that
he found himself on the approach of the second session
without the means of advertising the course.
In the meantime he practised surgery, having in 1747
become a member of the Corporation of Surgeons. In the
next year he travelled on the Continent with young Douglas,
going through Holland to Paris, and visiting some of the
medical schools. In particular he went to Leyden, to
Albinus, just alluded to, and saw some of the injected
preparations for which that anatomist was famous, and was
led to use this method of investigation in his own future
work with signal success.
In 1748 his youngest brother John, ten years his junior,
came up to London, fired, it would seem, by the same desire
of a larger field for his energies. He wrote to oflPer his
services to William as an assistant in his dissecting room.
William replied with a kind invitation to visit London.
John Hunter became at once his brother's pupil and
assistant, and was inducted by him into the anatomical
studies in which he was to spend most of his life. He soon
showed great skill in dissecting and injecting specimens, and
assisted his brother in many of his researches in anatomy
and physiology, making discoveries more or less in con-
junction with him. These, as we shall see, were afterwards
a fruitful source of dispute between them.
For several years after John came to London, his elder
brother sought to direct and help him in his studies, placing
him under Cheselden and under Pott. He even tried to
give him what he hadhimself enjoyed, a University training,
but John's stay at Oxford was very brief and to little pur-
pose, and he referred very ungraciously in after life to the
efforts that had been made on his behalf. Indeed, it must
be acknowledged that the younger brother gave, for a good
many years, little comfort or satisfaction to his friends. His
manners were rough and coarse, and his associates low.
Indications of this occur in the letters which have been
preserved.
The dispositions and training of the two brothers were
so different that it is hardly to be wondered at that they
diverged as years went on. William, with his culture and
polite instincts, had a trait of strictness and severity in
his character, although he was kind at heart. Yet he refers
often to his brother John in his lectures and in his medical
UNE MEDICAL LIBRARV
STAMFORD UmM^V.^\Tl
WIED\C(\V. C,tW c^
8 WILLIAM HUNTEH.
commentaries in appreciative terms ; and it was principally
through |William*s po werful interest that John was elected
to his most important appointment in the year 1768, that of
surgeon to St. George's Hospital.^
John once sent him a patient with the following laconic
note : — ** Dear brother, — The bearer is very desirous of
having your opinion. I do not know his case. He has no
money, and you don't want any, so that you are well met.
Ever yours, John Hunter."
John left his brother's laboratory in or before 1761, going
abroad on account of his health as a Surgeon in the Army,
and was succeeded by Hewson, a very able young anatomist
with whom after some years William disagreed, and Cruik-
shank was engaged in his place in 1770. Hewson made
important researches into the lymphatic system, discovering
the existence of these vessels in birds and fishes, and demon-
strating the human lymphatics with a fulness hitherto
unattained. He died at the age of 34 ; his works have been
published by the Sydenham Society. A curious letter is
extant from Benjamin Franklin, who, during his stay in
England, lodged at one time with William Hunter and
Hewson, and "as a common friend had been obliged to
listen to their mutual complaints." He writes to William
Hunter in 1772 to give evidence as to the terms of agree-
ment between them.^
In 1750 William Hunter received his degree of Doctor of
Medicine from Glasgow University, gave up surgical practice,
an4 left the hospitable roof of Mrs. Douglas to take a house
in Jermyn Street, where he practised as a physician.
By this time he had made various communications to the
Royal Society ; the first was as early as 1743, when he was
aged but 25, on " The Structure and Diseases of Articulating
Cartilages."
At that time, and indeed throughout the 18th century,
papers on medical subjects were laid before the Royal
Society in large numbers. He was elected a Fellow in 1767,
in the same year as his brother.^ It may be added here that
in 1768, on the foundation of the Royal Academy by Joshua
1 Adams (Op. cit.f p. 115) states that John Himter's appointments to the army, and as
Surgeon to the King, were in like manner owed to William's influence.
2 Hunter-BaiUie MSS., I., 186.
8 Tom Taylor, in his "Leicester Square," makes John to have received this honour ten
yean earlier than William. It was really at an age ten years earlier.
ATTENDANCE ON THE QUEEN. 9
Reynolds, Gainsborough, and others, Dr. Hunter was
appointed its first Professor of Anatomy.^ A painting in the
Royal College of Physicians, of which he became a Licentiate
in 1756, represents Hunter lecturing to the members of the
Academy.^
In his practice Hunter had come to turn his attention
especially to midwifery, and he had been appointed man-
midwife to the Middlesex Hospital in 1748, and Surgeon
Accoucheur to the British Lying-in Hospital next year. In
this branch of medicine his reputation constantly grew, until
in the year 1762, when he was forty-four years of age, he
was called in to see the young Queen of George the Third.
The story is told, but I have found no written authority for
it, that the King asked him when he came out of the
chamber, what ailed her majesty, and that he replied, "The
Queen is with hairnr In any case his attendance gave much
satisfaction, he was two years later named as Physician
Extraordinary to the Queen, and from this date his practice
amongst the upper classes rapidly increased. Hunter's
polished manners and refinement, coupled with much
shrewdness, and a careful attention to his patients, made
him a persona grata with persons of rank, whether by title
or talent. The letters existing prove that he was on terms
of easy acquaintanceship with many of the nobility, such as
the Earls of Chatham and Rockingham, Lords North, Bute,
and Newborough. Horace Walpole writes to him in 1773
to promise him Lord Orford's "Orignal" — an American
Moose deer.3
The historian Gibbon attended some of his lectures, and
David Hume, little as Hunter must have sympathised with
his philosophical views, was an intimate friend. A letter
has been preserved, written in 1775 by the Bishop of Down
and Connor, begging Dr. Hunter tp use his influence with
Mr. Hume, to prevent his coming to Ireland, where, says
the Bishop, his character as a philosopher was an object of
1 The Diploma dated December, 1768, bearing George III.'s signature and the seal of
the Academy, is displayed on the wall of the Hunteriau Museum, Glasgow.
2 Hunter is demonstrating the muscles of the thorax on a living subject to an audience
of about 26 persons. The artist is Zoffany.
S Hunter-BalllieMSS., I. 128. I have to thank mjr friend Mr. T. A. Cotton, F.L.S., for
identifying this animal : it is probably the specimen preserved in the Museum at
OlMgow.
10 WILLIAM ' HUNTER.
universal disgust.^ Eleven years later Cullen writes to
Hunter to give an account of Hume's last days, and gives a
striking picture of the calmness of the philosopher on the
approach of death,^
Hunter's character is placed in a favourable and interesting
light by some letters which passed between him and the Earl
of Suffolk, whose lady he had attended at her death in child-
bed in 1767. Lord Suffolk had addressed to Dr. Hunter a letter
full of the most affectionate gratitude for his attention and
help: " My busyness is to beg of you, if Reward is an irksome
word, to let me substitute Regard in its room." Dr. Hunter,
after warmly thanking Lord Suffolk for his letter, continues:
" I am now by your Lordship's kind sympathy, as happy as
I can be, after taking such a share in so great a calamity. I
feel an inclination to say a thousand things which I must
suppress. I wish to talk upon a subject which you must
forget. We will take it up in Heaven. At this moment I
fancy that I have a Friend there who listens to my thoughts,
and bids me say to you in a little time we shall all be happy
again ; who bids me tell you, to take care, for her sake, of
yourself and of your child.
"Allow me to love your child all the days of my life : she
will be exactly what you describe and what you wish.
Allow me sometimes to see her, that I may indulge a
pleasing melancholy and fancy that I am doing something
very agreeable to Heaven. It may be preparatory to some
exalted enjoyment there. Allow me likewise to offer your
Lordship the best advice I can. As soon as possible, do a
force to nature and go into the bussy world again. Nothing
but that, I think, can restore your peace of mind and make
you what I am sure you wish to be, a Blessing to Mankind.
May you yourself be blest, both for your own sake, and
for loving so tenderly one so worthy of all your affection." ^
Nor was Hunter's acquaintance confined to his own
country. He maintained correspondence with friends abroad,
sometimes in the Latin language, in which he was well
1 lb. 89, 93. 2 n>. 189, cf. 141, 142.
8 n>. pp. 102-4. Henry, 12th Earl of Suffolk, K.O., was Secretary of State for the
Northern Department. He was devotedly attached to his lady, and after her death, cared
only to live for the child. She died at the age of eight years, and then Lord Suffolk married
again, though he could never shew again the deep devotion he had given. He died aged
only 89. The story of his loves and sorrows has come down through a favourite niece, who
Uvea to nearly 100 years, and told it to the present Countess of Suffolk, to whose courtesy I
•m indebted for this information.
HIS MUSEUM. 11
versed. At this time too, he was collecting for his Museum.
The brothers Hunter were rivals in this also, that each
formed a large Museum for teaching purposes. Anatomical
preparations were the first object, but John, as is well known,
added other departments of natural history, until he had
drawn together the magnificent collection, which, enriched
by later workers, adorns the Royal College of Surgeons in
this city.
William Hunter took a yet wider range. Anatomy,
healthy and morbid, was his first care. "The completeness,"
writes Professor John Young, M.D., the present Curator,
" with which every organ is represented, in its normal and
morbid conditions, indicates the systematic purpose with
which he started ; and the exquisite beauty of the injections,
vermilion and mercury, attest his great manipulative skill."
Then Biology, in its whole scope as then known, was repre-
sented : stuffed animals, such as the elephant : and Hunter
bought entire collections of shells, insects and minerals, as
they came into the market. He included the spoils of
Captain Cook's voyages, the weapons and implements of
savage nations ; antiquities of all ages and climes ; books, not
alone medical and scientific, but a fine series of the classics,
and of early printed books and manuscripts, some of them
illuminated.^ His taste in art led him to obtain engravings,
and a choice collection of specimens of the work of the best
painters of all schools. Lastly his cabinet of coins, the
object of unceasing care and lavish expenditure, contains
35,000 pieces, and is one of the finest known. The entire
Hunterian Museum was taken to Glasgow in 1807 in accord-
ance with Hunter's will : it has during recent years been
well displayed in new quarters in the large University
buildings in that city : but it is to be feared that its treasures
are less known and used than they deserve to be. A proposal
was mooted, a few years since, to sell the coins ; Mr.
William Hunter- Baillie, then living at a very advanced age,
viewed this proposal with indignation, and wrote that, as
Hunter's heir, he should claim the money. The project
was abandoned.^
He sought, but sought in vain, to construct on the basis of
this Museum and his lecture classes a National School of
1 See for an aoooimt of the bibliographic treasures " An Address on the Hunterian
Library, by John Young, M.D., Glasgow, 1897."
2 See Appkndix (A), The Hunterian Museum, Olasgow*
12 WILLIAM. HUNTER.
Anatomy. He was ready to erect the building and to endow
it with the sum of £7000. ' But his application in 1765 to
the Government of the day to grant a site was unheeded,
and the golden opportunity which might have done much
for British Medicine was suffered to pass by. It was a bitter
disappointment to Hunter, and although Lord Shelburne
sought as an individual to undo the ill act of the Cabinet,
and offered to head a subscription list with a promise of a
thousand guineas, Hunter's pride would not stoop to accept
it. He turned to rely upon his own unaided efforts. A plot
of ground was purchased in Great Windmill Street, near the
present Piccadilly Circus, and here in 1770 he built a spacious
house, containing a large room for his museum, a lecture
theatre, and dissecting rooms, besides rooms for his own
residence. Here he lived and taught for the remaining
thirteen years of his life. The house was afterwards
occupied by his nephew Dr. Matthew Baillie, and it was here
that his sister, Joanna Baillie, began to write her dramas : it
still stands, a plain red brick structure, somewhat altered, the
portico gone, and the building now incorporated in the Lyric
Theatre, i
p/ Hunter was a keen and jealous controversialist, laid
' 'exaggerated stress upon his own discoveries, and was too
sensitive of his fame as an original worker. He was conscious
of this weakness, an inordinate love of controversy : and
condoned it on the plea that the passive submission of dead
^bodies rendered anatomists less able to bear contradiction.^y
' Vehement and bitter was his dispute with the Monroes,
father and son. In the discovery of the tubuli testis,
however, both he and they had been anticipated by Haller,
who had announced his discovery before 1750. /
Old Baron Albrecht von Haller, who had been Professor
of Medicine and Anatomy at Gottingen, but was now at
1 The house of John Hunter on the East side of Leicester Square, containing his lecture
theatre, dissecting rooms^ etc., is at this yery time about to be absorbed by the Alhambra
Musio-haU which adj oins it. An original drawing by Rowlandson, now in the Conservator's
room at the Roy. Coll. of Surgeons, depicljs "the Dissecting Room" of Dr. W. Hunter at
Oreat Windmill Street. The laige room is crowded : several bodies are exposed. Hunter's
figure is raised above the rest : Hewson dissects an e;^e, Howison the intestines, whilst
Croikshank above him looks on, and Smollett's big form is seen, eyeglass in hand. Pitcaim,
Baillie, Home, Sheldon, Camper and others have been supposed to be rei>resented, but
Baillie was not in London untu six years after Hewson's death. Mr. J. B. Bailey, who has
reproduced the picture in his *' Diary of a Resurrectionist,'* identifies a figure upon W.
Hunter's right with his brother John.
S Med, Commentaries, IIH, Introd. to Supp.
L
/
HIS CONTROVERSIES. 13
Berne, one of the most estimable and illustrious figures in
the annals of medicine, writes to William Hunter in 1764,
sending a copy of his physiology, and refers to Hunter's
dispute with the Monroes, in a spirit wholly above the
littleness of controversies for priority : " He thinks himself
happy in having such an able man of his same opinion."
He goes on to speak of Hunter's unpublished work on the
uterus ; he " longs after your performance of the foetus
whereof he would make a great usage." ^
It is right to mark the failings even of the great, and this
jealousy for the fame of a discoverer is one. Far better was
the reply of Watt, when a friend regretted that another
should have carried off the honour of discovering the com-
position of water : " It matters not whether Cavendish
discovered this or I : it is discovered."
/ The dispute between the brothers Hunter, often alluded
to, occurred in 1780, three years before William's death, and
when his health was failing from gout. John had read
before the Royal Society a paper on the placenta, in which
he stated as his own discovery the determination of the
separate maternal and fcetal circulations in the placenta.
The work had been done twenty-five years before in
William's dissecting room, and had been repeatedly and
habitually put forward by the latter during many years past
as his own discovery. For what reason John now revived
this matter of ancient history and laid claim to the credit
himself is not known. William promptly and emphatically
protested in a letter to the Society ; and John replied in a
cavalier tone, proposing that they should share the honour
with all who were present when the dissections were made.
The truth probably lay in some sense on both sides. The
two brothers working in William's dissecting room, John,
under William's directions, made discoveries. William may
easily have regarded these as belonging to himself, and his
obligations covered by a general acknowledgment of John's
able lEissistance,^ whilst the latter was disposed to claim them
for himself. /
1 Hunter-Baillie MSS. I. 114. Also Memorial of his death, ib., p. 168, " pie et placide
. . . obdortnivit in Domino.'^
2 Such acknowledgment was often generous : he would say» " I am simply the
demonstrator of this disooyery : it was m^ brother's." Adams, p. 124.
14 WILLIAM HUNTER.
The sharp controversy between these brothers, both so
eminent, must have painfully impressed their friends,
although the blunt, rough manner of the one and the
sensitive pride of the other would go far to account for its
occurrence. The Society decided not to print the paper, as
it was in dispute. A sad estrangement resulted between
William and John, and they scarcely met again.
After Haller died. Hunter was chosen in 1782 to occupy
his place as one of the eight foreign Associates of the French
Academy, one of the highest honours that a man of science
can win. Haller's seat had been occupied before him by
Morgagni, and before Morgagni by Ruysch. On this
occasion the Chymists, one of the eight classes into which
the Academy was divided, wished to have Bergman, the
Swedish chemist, elected, but the class of Anatomists
insisted that it was their right to appoint a foreign Associate,
and Hunter was chosen, i
A letter announcing Hunter's election as a Member of the
Academic de Medicine in 1778, in succession to Linnaeus,
bears the signature of Vicq d'Azyr.^
We do not find that either Dr. Hunter or his brother took
! ' much part in the political events of their time. A letter to
. ' a friend written in 1778, five years before his death, con-
. ' eludes : " I told you that I have taken my leave of Politics ;
. and am sorry to say that as far as I am a judge this country
. , deserves humiliation, or rather a scourge. Qod bless you.
: . William Hunter."^
The times indeed looked dark and threatening. Great
Britain was at war with the United States and with France ;
Spain was just declaring war against us. The long contest
in Hindustan was in its early and more doubtful stages. At
home there was trouble and discontent. And who that could
have foreseen the prolonged struggles that were to come
during nearly forty years, would not have lost heart for
the future of our country ? Yet through all, the staying
power of the Anglo-Saxon race proved equal to the strain.
William Pitt became Prime Minister in the year that Hunter
died.
1 MSS. Miss Hunter-Baillie.
S Honter-BaiUie MSS., 1. 160, 159. 3 MSS, Miss Hwitw-Baillie,
HIS DEATH. 15
Ten years before his death, despite his frugal manner of
living, Dr. Hunter began to suffer from " wandering gout,"
affecting, we are told, sometimes the limbs and sometimes
the stomach. His bodily powers, strained by incessant
exertion which he would not relax, gradually waned, but
the spirit was active and undaunted to the end. On the
30th March, 1783, he rose from his sick-bed, against the
remonstrances of his friends, to deliver the introductory
lecture of his course, an occasion when there was a large
and more general audience. Towards the end of the lecture
he fainted, and had to be carried from the theatre. He
never rose again, but died quietly a few days later, on the
30th of March. John Hunter came to see him again and
again in his illness, and gave him needed surgical attention
(catheterism). The brothers were reconciled at last.
Dividing lines belong to life ; as it has been finely said, " It
is death alone which integrates,"
He died in peace. Life had had its storms, but the end
was calm. " If I had strength enough left to hold a pen,"
he said to Dr. Charles Combe his executor, " I would write
how pleasant and easy a thing it is to die." William Hunter
was only 65 years of age, the same age attained by his
brother John ten years later ; both died in the fulness of
their work, closing a life of strenuous labour. So died their
nephew, Matthew Baillie ; so died many other masters in
our art, from the days of Sydenham and of Radcliffe down
to those of our own Wilson Fox and Andrew Clark. He
was buried in the Rector's vault of St. Jameses, Piccadilly,
where his monument stands between those of Sydenham and
Richard Bright.
WILLIAM HUNTER AS ANATOMIST.
I propose to place William Hunter before you as an
Anatomist, as a Physician, and as a Practitioner of Mid-
wifery.
Firstly then, and especially, as an anatomist, and in this
term must be included throughout the work of the physi-
ologist also, then scarcely separated from the sister science.
The high place which is to be assigned to William Hunter
in the history of anatomy is based upon four claims ; —
LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
MEDICAL CENTER
16 WILLIAM HUNTER
First : That he was a close student of nature.
Second : That he made discoveries in anatomy.
Third : That he founded a school of anatomy in this city.
Fourth : That he trained his brother, John Hunter.
I will say a few words upon each of these heads.
(1) Very early in his career William Hunter formed the
habit of mind which governed his whole after life, and
made him an unprejudiced observer of nature. The words
of John Hunter are often quoted, " don't think, but try " —
yet this close study of nature by experiment was hardly a
less feature of the work of the elder brother. At the age of
26, in a letter to his brother James, he speaks of "my dear
idol nature, simplex mxmditiis^^^ ^ and next year to his
friend Cullen, he writes as follows : — "Well, how does the
animal economy appear to you, now that you have examined
it, as one may say, with precision ? I have good reason to
put the question to you, because in my little attempts that
way, since I begin to think for myself. Nature, where I am
best disposed to mark her, beams so strong upon me, that I
am lost in wonder, and count it sacrilege to measure her
mealiest feature by my largest conception. Ay, ay, the time
will come when our pert philosophers will blush to find,
that they have talked with as little real knowledge, and as
peremptorily of the animal powers, as the country miller
who balances the powers of Europe." ^
These are the crude remarks of a young man, yet how
well they forecast his maturer thoughts let an extract from
one of his lectures show. He is speaking of the middle of
the seventeenth century : — ** From that time the important
doctrine of rejecting all hypotheses of general knowledge,
till a sufficient number of facts shall have been ascertained
by careful observation and judicious experiment, has been
every day growing into more credit."
Observations such as these may seem to us to be common-
place, but they were not so in his day. The painted scaffold-
ing of mere hypothesis, useful doubtless in its day, but
which had too long done duty for truth — had too long hidden
1 Hunter-Baillie HSS. II. 11. S Thomson, 1. 21.
AS AN ANATOMIST. 17
the solid edifice which was within — had to be pulled down,
piece by piece, in those reforming ages ; and in this des-
tructive as well as constructive work, William Hunter did
yeoman service. His was an unflinching search for truth
as it is found in nature. His life illustrates the precept of
Bacon that "Nature is only subdued by submission," ^ and
that famous saying of Hippocrates, *' Science and opinion
are twain ; the one makes for knowledge, the other for
ignorance. — ^v6 ydp lincrTrinri rkj Kai do^a : <5v r6 fikv BwicrrafrBai
irouEij rb Sk &yvoeiv,^
(2) William Hunter made for himself discoveries in
anatomy.
The tubuli of the testis, the ducts of the lachrymal gland,
the origin and use of the lacteal and lymphatic vessels,
were subjects early investigated by William Hunter, with
more or less assistance from John. William described in
his lectures from time to time the discoveries that were
made, and it was about these discoveries that, whilst John
was at the war at Belle Isle and in Spain, William waged
his controversial war with the two Monroes. Probably both
they and he did good work in these departments of anatomy,
though neither were actually first in time to establish new
truths.
Congenital hernia was another topic which closely
engaged William Hunter's attention. Haller had discovered
and described it, but Hunter was the first to expound in
detail its formation, in connection with the descent of the
testis from the abdomen.
Again, he explained the anatomy of the different forms
of aneurysm more perfectly than had been done before his
time, and he minutely described the varicose aneurysm,
a condition which had hitherto escaped the notice of
surgeons.^
The discovery of the separate maternal and foetal circula-
tions in the placenta has already been referred to, as one in
which perhaps both the Hunters had a share. Their des-
cription of the placental structure was questioned by later
1 yatura non nisi parendo vincUtMT, i Ifomos,
3 Medical Obtervations and Inquiries, Vol. I., p. 823 ; II., 890 ; IV., 885.
%
18 WILLIAM HUNTER
investigators, but it has been justified by subsequent
researches, and forms, I believe, at the present day the
foundation of our knowledge of placental anatomy.
In close connection with this discovery must be men-
tioned his researches into the nature of the fcetal coverings.
Hunter first applied the name decidua to the membrane
which lines the gravid uterus, and first described its dis-
position in that cavity : the decidua reflexa was unknown
before his time.^ The origin of the decidua was long a
doubtful matter. John Hunter speaks of it as developed
from coagulated lymph or blood, and gives a plate of it
under that description. Even William Hunter is made to
favour such a view in his posthumous work on the anatomy
of the uterus, but the statement occurs, not in Hunter's own
words, but in those added editorially by Baillie. Elsewhere
in the MS. lectures which have been preserved, William
Hunter states most clearly that the decidua is " a lamella of
the uterus," "the internal lamellae of the uterus itself."*
It is clear, then, as Matthews Duncan shows, that John
Hunter was wrong in this matter and William Hunter
right.
Indeed, the closer William's own words in his lectures
upon this whole subject are examined, the stronger does the
impression grow that he had the principal part in the
placental discovery .^ Dr. Teacher tells me that his study
of the preparations at Glasgow leads him to the same view,
and that " the fulness and accuracy of William Hunter's
knowledge of these structures was marvellous." *
But the crowning work of his life was the demonstration
of the Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus. The book
was published in 1774, when he was nearly 60 years of age,
and contains thirty-four very large plates, mostly drawn by
Rymsdyk. The typography is excellent, and is the work of
Baskerville, the famous Birmingham printer. Hunter had
been collecting materials for this great work for 23 years,
1 One of W. Hunter's plates of the decidua is still in use in Quain's Anatomy.
2 MS. Lectures, 1775, R.C.S., 4S c. 31, pp. 34-36.
3 n>., p. 37.
4 W. Hunter displays a charming enthusiasm when he approaches the subject of the
placenta. Holding up to his class an injected specimen, he says :— '* Now let me set all
modesty and all appearance even of it aside, and say here is the finest preparation in the
world." MS. Lectures (cited), p. 27. He was extremely careful and jealous over his pre-
parations : " There,*' he says, " is a fine preparation, and if you let it fall you may just as
well knock me on the head, for I shall not be able to outlive it." lb., p. 89. See anecdote
by Dr. Parry, quoted in Quarterly Review^ Jan., 1897, p. 113 ; but this was about 1778, when
he was old and gouty.
ON THE GRAVID UTERUS. 19
having previously studied the subject in brutes. In 1751
he met with his first opportunity of examining a specimen
of the gravid uterus in man ; it was carefully dissected, and
the blood-vessels injected, and drawings were made and
coloured by an able hand. In the course of some months,
the first ten plates of his work were drawn, and were about
to be published, when a second and a third specimen came
in his way and furnished supplemental plates. He then
formed the design of waiting, until, by embracing further
opportunities, he might be able to construct a complete
work, exhibiting all the principal changes that occur in the
uterus during the nine months of gestation/
An admirable and unique series of preparations, from
many of which the plates were taken, is preserved in the
Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. There are about 400 speci-
mens altogether, besides very fine plaster casts of many of
the dissections. The collection has more than a historical
value : it illustrates most graphically to-day the anatomy of
the uterus and placenta, and proves how truly and fully
William Hunter had discerned their structure and relations.
And thus, sparing neither time, nor labour, nor expense, after
twenty-three years he was able to bring before the scientific
world his great work. The text is in Latin and English, in
parallel columns. The plates are of much beauty and fineness
of execution. They are nearly all of natural size, and are
drawn with marvellous fidelity to nature, not allowing, as he
tells us, the imagination to vary the actual appearances in order
to render the object more useful as a demonstration — in
other words they are in no sense diagrams, but as it were
photographic in their reality. This will be easily understood
by a comparison with Smellie's tables published some years
previously.
This " immortal work," writes Matthews Duncan, " is one
of the stable foundations of the science and art of midwifery,
and cannot fail, in all future ages, to be as valuable and
useful as it now is." It was reprinted by the Sydenham
Society in 1851, and included in Caldani's Icones, 1813.
(3) A chief part of the influence of a great teacher is
upon those who come after him. So had it been with
Boerhaave : from Leyden, as from a centre of new light, the
influence spread forth, so that in the early part of the
eighteenth century a large proportion of the medical schools
in Europe were led by those whom Boerhaave had trained.
The pupils of the Hunter brothers were in a like manner
20 WILLIAM HUNTER'S
the leaders of British medicine and surgery at the beginning
of the present century. William Hunter's talents as a
lecturer were conspicuous. " He was probably," writes his
nephew Baillie, not perhaps an impartial judge, yet a writer
of much care and precision, '* the best teacher of anatomy
that ever lived," ^
''No one ever possessed more enthusiasm for the art,
more persevering industry, more acuteness of investigation,
more perspicuity of expression, or indeed a greater share of
natural eloquence. He was uncommonly ready in his
apprehensions, and singularly happy in making others
understand what he knew himself. His arrangement of
any subject was clear and judicious ; he knew how far the
attention would reach, and when it was beginning to decline ;
and he had a most happy talent of introducing anecdotes
which might excite, amuse and instruct." ^
The School of Anatomy which Hunter founded was
located in the house he had built, containing his museum,
lecture theatre, and dissecting rooms, and was hence called
the Great Windmill Street School. It was carried on after
his death, at first by Cruikshank and Matthew Baillie, and
after them by others, until about 1830. In the list of teachers
at this School we find the names of Sir Benjamin Brodie,
Sir Charles Bell, Herbert Mayo, Caesar Hawkins, Benjamin
Guy Babington. University College was opened in 1828,
and King's College in 1831 ; Bell migrated to the first, and
Mayo to the second, and the old School was soon after
closed. Its work was done, and Hunter would have rejoiced
to see the day of more ample and noble colleges, where
science has been taught in a far wider scope. But of these
colleges the old private schools, and this of Hunter's in
particular, were the forerunners and parents, and they are
worthy of parental honour.^
1 Baillie, Autobiography,
2 BaiUie, Lectures, p. 74. The curious story of Mi's. Yan Butchell, whose body was
embalmed bv Hunter, long preserved by her husband, and is now to be seen m the
Hunterian Museum, Royal College of Surgeons, will be found in Fettigrew's Med. Portrait
Gallery, art. W, Hunter, p. 10. See also Sir Qeorge Baker's humorous epitaph :—
"In reliquias MarisB Vanbutchel, novo miraculo consenratas," etc.
" Ab indecor& putredine yindicavit
Vir egregius, Qulielmus Hunterus
Artifidi prius intentati
Inyentor idem, et perfactor.'* etc
Quoted in Munk*s Boll of the Royal CoUege of Physictans, 2nd ed., II., p. 216.
3 On the Great Windmill Street School, see a letter by Sir B. 0. Brodie, in Thomson, II.,
p. 740 ; and Mr. D'arcy Power's excellent article in Brtt. Med, Journal, 1895, II., p. 1188.
See also Sir Oharles Bell's Letters (p. 196, etc.) ; when he came to London in 1804 the
medical leaders were old Hunterian pupils (p. 20).
SCHOOL OF ANATOMY. 21
(4) The fourth claim of William Hunter to the position
of a great anatomist rests upon the influence and training
he bestowed upon his more famous brother, John Hunter.
It was said of Sir Humphry Davy that the greatest of all
his discoveries was the discovery of Faraday, and so the
greatest of William Hunter's was perhaps the discovery of
his gifted brother. I would not indeed say, as Professor
Gross does, that " if it had not been for William we never
could have had John," — ^nor quote, with Brodie, the claim of
Ulysses to the glory of Achilles, ergo opera illius mea sunt :
because one who reads John Hunter^s works must own the
marks of an original mind, which would have made its way,
and taken its own course, had circumstances been what
they might. Yet William's invitation of his brother to
London, and his example and teaching during the years when
John was his pupil and assistant, must have had a large part
in directing John into the line of study in which he achieved
such distinction. His was indeed, as Baillie writes, '^ a bold
inventive mind," untrammelled by conventions or traditions,
but seeking after truth alone. They were a great pair— ^ar
nohile fratrum ; much of their work was common. We do
well to honour them as " the Hunters."
WILLIAM HUNTER AS PHYSICIAN.
In speaking of William Hunter as a physician, I use the
latter word in no restricted sense. Perhaps the departments
of medicine were not then so strongly marked out from one
another : at any rate Hunter took no narrow view of his
profession. He began his medical life as an anatomist,
practising surgery the while, then he took a physician's
degree, and finally devoted himself chiefly to the practice
of midwifery. Nothing, indeed, that came within the scope
of medicine in its widest sense was foreign to his mind.
He made many contributions to the six volumes of '^ Medical
Observations and Inquiries," published between 1757 and
1812, by that " Society of Physicians " which was the
precursor of the Medical Society of London, and is often
confounded with it. Hunter succeeded his friend Fothergill
as President of this Society. Several of the papers relate to
aneurysm, and to his discovery of varicose aneurysm,
others to the advisability of operating in empyema when
there is no more than a reasonable probability of finding
pus, to necrosis of the tibia and the nature of callus, and to
rupture of the capsular ligament in dislocations at the
i^
22 WILLIAM HUNTER
shoulder. There is one very careful and elaborate record of
a case of traumatic emphysema, in which the cellular tissue
of the whole of the body was inflated with air. The patient
was in extremis, but Hunter, by suitable incisions, pressing
the air out, and stopping the injured thorax, succeeded in
effecting a cure. He goes on to expound the nature and
functions of the cellular tissue, and the use of punctures in
anasarca : these should be very small, rather than large, as
he had learned by trial of both these methods, one on each
leg of the same patient. He had dissected black cattle, dead
of an epidemic disorder attended with emphysema. Some
other papers deal with the structure of the symphysis pubis,
and the insensibility of tendon.
^ There are two remarkable papers on strictly medical
topics, both written late in life, and communicated to the
Society shortly after his death. One records three cases of
congenital heart disease. The first was of an infant, cyanosed
to blackness, which lived 13 days. The pulmonary artery
was impervious at its origin, the ductus arteriosus bringing
blood to it from the aorta, and the foramen ovale was open :
the right ventricle contained scarcely any cavity at all. In
the second case, an extremely thin boy, whose legs reminded
him of a greyhound or a water fowl, lived to 13 years,
subject to syhcopal attacks ; the pulmonary artery was
found to be stenob'ed, barely admitting a small probe, and
the ventricular septum was partly deficient. This latter
condition obtained also invhisitiiird case, a still-born infant.
In commenting upon these cases, he enters on the
philosophy of malformations and makes the following
remarks : " The last conjecture which we shall venture to
make is upon the scheme which the Author of our nature
has laid down for perpetuating animals. Particular evils
are allowed to exist. Many animals, from the imperfection
of their fabric, are necessarily to perish before the common
natural period. This is compensated for by a great superfluity
in the number, and so it is also in the Vegetable Kingdom.
As in vegetables too, the parent generally produces a species
very like itself : but sometimes a different constitution,
whether better or worse. Whatever may happen in a
particular instance, or with regard to an individual, the
most perfect and sound animal upon the whole, will have
the best chance of living to procreate others of his kind : in
other words, the best breed will prevail : and the monstrous
constitution, and that which is defective, or of such a fabric
/■
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Mllliam CiilCen.
AS A PHYSICIAN. 23
as necessarily to breed disease, will be cat off. The most
perfect constitution will be preserved : it will be most
susceptible of love, and most likely to meet with a warm
return of that passion: so that, in every way, the sound
constitution will have the preference in procreation, and the
defective, weak, or diseased line will be wearing out." ^
In these remarkable sentences we see a foreshadowing
more than 100 years ago of the doctrine of Evolution. The
essential influence of Natural Variation and the Survival of
the Fittest, two of the most prominent features of the
Darwinian theory, are clearly stated by William Hunter, y
The other paper is not less noteworthy.
It treats of '* the successful cure of a severe disorder of the
Stomach by Milk taken in small quantities at once." ^ A boy
of seven or eight years was reduced to a desperate condition
on account of vomiting his food. He was wasted to a mere
skeleton, and had been in the hands of many doctors.
Hunter hit on the happy expedient of giving milk alone,
and reducing the dose to such a modicum as he could retain.
This case is often quoted, and is given at large by Sir Thomas
Watson in his lectures.^
I must allude to one more of Hunter's papers, that on the
" Uncertainty of the Signs of Murder in the case of Bastard
Children." This paper, which shows that legal medicine
also engaged his thoughts closely at times, deals with the
delicate and difficult question of the guilt of a mother for
child-murder or concealment of birth, and of the proofs of
her crime. Hunter's long experience and wide knowledge of
mankind, his high sense of justice, and his deep sense of pity
are alike displayed in this remarkable paper, which is well
worthy of study at this day.*
WILLIAM CULLBN.
It may be appropriate here to say something of two
eminent friends of William Hunter, William Cullen and
John Fothergill. Cullen has already been alluded to as his
early preceptor in medicine, and throughout life his constant
and affectionate friend. He was eight years Hunter's senior,
but he attained a much greater age, outliving Hunter by
seven years. It is hardly necessary to describe the high
1 Med. Obs.f VI., 307. 2 Id. p. 310. 3 Lecture IxriiL
4 Med. Oba.^ VI., 266. This paper was reprinted in the third edition of Dr. Samuel Farr's
** JElements of MedtcalJuriaprudencet" 1816. An exquisitely written MS. copy is in the
Library of the Boy. Med. Ghir. Society. See Appkmdix (0).
24
WILLIAM CDLLEN.
•¥
position attained by Cullen as a medical teacher. He lectured
from 1746 to 1790, for the first ten years at Glasgow, and
afterwards at Edinburgh. His fame as a lecturer was very
great and well deserved. We are interested here in the
comparison between Cullen and Hunter. Closely attached
as they were, and consulting together often by letter, their
aims in medicine differed somewhat widely. Cullen was of
the philosophical school : he took medicine as it was then
known, and threw it into systematic shape. He probably
did not add, writes Sir William Hamilton, " a single new
fact to medical science." By the medium of his lectures,
delivered extempore, the principles of the medical art were
promulgated in an ordered form and sequence which was
evolved by his clear and able mind. Such a teacher must
pass over inconsistencies and difficulties, must adopt
hypotheses, and can scarcely avoid giving them the emphasis
of proven facts, and cannot use that suspension of judgment
in matters as yet undetermined which was the attitude of
the Hunters. His system, his methodical synopsis of medical
knowledge, was admirable for teaching purposes, but its
rigid lines tended afterwards to cramp and hinder the very
science which at first they promoted ; and the greater the
ability with which a system has been framed, and the higher
its consequent authority amongst men, the longer does it
exert its contracting influence over the progress of know-
ledge.
It was long before Cullen published anything, not indeed
until pirated copies of his lectures were being issued by
others. When in 1776 he found himself compelled to print,
he sent his MSS. up to Hunter in London, begging for his
revision and advice. Hunter returned them with a kindly
letter.
"I have read them," he writes, "with care, and shall
speak with freedom. I am sensible of no material objection
to your doctrines. I have not yet made up my mind about
many of the phenomena, particularly about inflammatory
crusts, exsudation, pus, expectoration, etc., and, therefore, I
cannot in some of these questions decide with you or against
you." 1
John Hunter had not yet laid down what has been termed
by Latham the grammar of inflammation. A methodical
teacher like Cullen must make up his mind on all these
1 ThomMn, I. 669.
JOHN FOTHERGILL. 25
points, and it is not always to the furtherance of the truth.
His systematic works continued to be used as text books for
at least forty years after his death.^
JOHN FOTHBRGILL.
Anotherfriend of William Hunter's was Dr. John Fothergill.
There was something of a parallel in the outward course of their
lives. Each came up to London as a young man unknown,
Hunter from Scotland, Fothergill from the Yorkshire dales ;
each set himself to a life of continuous work and research,
each attained to fame and honour and large emoluments,
and each died unmarried about the same age.
Fothergill was an assiduous and zealous clinical worker :
he lived first in Gracechurch Street, and afterwards in
Harpur Street, Bloomsbury. His opportunity came in the
epidemic of " putrid sore throat " as it was called, which
broke out in many parts of Europe in the years following
1747 ; it is generally considered to have been identical with
the "diphtheria" of Bretonneau. Fothergill studied this
disease minutely, and was very successful in its treatment.
His practice as a physician at once rose, until he could
hardly meet the demands made upon him. His treatise
upon the disorder is one of our British medical classics.
He was a consistent member of the Society of Friends,
a Quaker of the old school, subdued in spirit, cautious in
expression, singular in speech, benevolent towards all men.
He was Clerk of the Friends' Yearly Meeting one year, and
he devoted time and thought, in conference with Dr. Franklin,
to draft a scheme for overcoming the dispute with the
American colonies without recourse to war.
In a day when good schools were uncommon, he took the
chief part in founding a large school at Ackworth in York-
shire, where his memory is still lovingly cherished ; a school
which has done excellent work, both within his own com-
munity and beyond its borders.
Fothergill had this especially in common with William
Hunter, that both were ardent lovers of natural history.
The vegetable kingdom was perhaps his chief field. His
botanical garden at Upton was esteemed the best in Europe
after that at Kew, and was stocked with the choicest plants
from abroad. He had agents in every part of the known
world collecting new and rare living specimens. A letter
1 Thonuoii't edition of hia works ii dated 18S7.
26 MATTHEW BAILLIE.
has been preserved which is said to be in the handwriting
of the young Queen of George the Third. It is dated from
Richmond Lodge, Sept. 11th, 1769, and runs thus : —
*' Mrs. Schwellenberg's Compliments to Doctr. Hunter and
she heard yersterday that Doctr. Forthergyll had got several
Tea Trees Come from the Indieas in the Last Ships and the
Queen wishes that Doctr. Hunter Could make Interest with
Doctr. Forthergyll to get Her only one of them for Her
Majestys own Garden." ^
Fothergill died a few years before Hunter, and seventy
mourning coaches followed the body to its sequestered and
beautiful resting place at Winchmore Hill. His collection
of paintings of flowers and other natural objects on vellum
was purchased for the Empress of Russia for £2,300 ; and his
shells, corallines, insects, reptiles, etc., were offered at his
express desire to his friend William Hunter for the sum of
£1,500, far below their cost, and they now form part of the
Museum at Glasgow.*
MATTHEW BAILLIE.
In considering Hunter as a physician it is natural to think
of his nephew. Dr. Matthew Baillie. He was the only son
of Dorothy Hunter, who married the Rev. James Baillie,
afterwards Professor of Divinity at Glasgow. His father
dying whilst he was still a youth, young Baillie was adopted
by William Hunter, who, however, treated him with a
certain strictness which was no doubt judged expedient for
his training. He gave him an excellent education, first at
Glasgow, then at Oxford, and finally in London. Classical
exercises formed an important feature ; he had to send to
his uncle from time to time long passages of Latin prose of
his own construction. The details of his study were super-
vised by William Hunter ; he was kept well in his place,
and rather "pinsh'd for money." "First deserve, then
expect" was his uncle's emphatic injunction.^
When he came to London, about three years only before his
uncle's death, he became at once his pupil, availing himself at
the same time of the best facilities for studying elsewhere.
Baillie entered quickly into the Hunters' methods, his
training had already made him accurate and methodical, and
when Hunter died in 1783, the young man of twenty-two
stepped at once into his place, and, in conjunction with
1 Hanter-Baillie MSS. VoL 1., 118. 2 See Appendix (B) Dr, John Fothergill,
I H.-B. MSS., n., 4» 21, etc.
HIS TRAINING AND LIFE. 27
Cruikshank, advertised the continnance of the anatomical
lectures. It was a bold step, but well justified by the result.
William Hunter had left him his house, and the use of his
fine museum for twenty years, after which it was to go to
Glasgow. Of the £19,000 which constituted his uncle's
fortune, £8,000 was bequeathed for the support of the
museum, and other sums as annuities to relatives, so that a
comparatively small residue came to Baillie, besides the old
Hunter property at Long Calderwood, which he generously
relinquished in favour of his uncle John.
Baillie's classes were soon well attended, and for sixteen
years he worked assiduously as a medical teacher, dissecting,
comparing, lecturing and writing. Morbid Anatomy was his
chief occupation, and his steadfast aim was to make this the
basis of his clinical work. In the meantime he had been
elected, partly through John Hunter's influence, physician to
St. George's Hospital. By the year 1800 — he was then but 39
years old — his private practice had so greatly increased, that
he retired, first from the lectureship and then from the
hospital appointment, and devoted himself to his consulting
practice alone. This was probably the largest known in
London since the days of Mead. He enjoyed the leading
position for about twenty years, and was the trusted attendant
of King George the Third and his family, and their confidant
in their secrets and troubles, which were many. A baronetcy
was offered to him about 1812, but he preferred, it would
seem, to remain with Harvey and Sydenham and Mead and
the Hunters, undistinguished by the titles which have given
to some lesser men a brief and borrowed lustre. Like his
uncle, Matthew Baillie was a man of slender frame, never
robust ; his sisters lived to nearly 100 years, and his own
life might have been longer had it been one of less pressure,
but under the unceasing toil, sixteen hours daily, his mind
was harassed and his energies exhausted, so that he died,
literally worn out, in 1823, at 62 years of age. He was a
man of singular integrity, and guileless simplicity of char-
acter, and so bore himself through all the duties of life,
which were in his case fraught with wide influence on
others, as to win the confidence and admiration of all men.^
I have yet to speak of one notable event in Dr. Baillie's
life — his publication in 1793 of a treatise on Morbid
Anatomy. I think that the importance of this event as
1 See Memoir by his son. in Hunter-Baillie MSS. II., 80. His Autobiography was
edited by Mr. J. B. JBailey ana published in the Fractitionerf July, 1896.
28 BAILLIE ON MORBID ANATOMY.
marking an era in the history of medicine is hardly yet
appreciated. It was, so far as appears, the first systematic
treatise on Morbid Anatomy that had been written in any
country. Morgagni in his famous work, De Sedihua et
causia Morhorum^ published in 1761, had given to the
world a series of records of cases and dissections which
forms a storehouse of facts. Soemmerring had done similar
work. But Baillie for the first time took the various organs
of the body seriatim^ and set forth the diverse morbid con-
ditions which were found to belong to each. The basis of
the work was his own observation, his own specimens and
preparations, and those which his uncle had made before
him. And the whole was written with such candour and
simplicity and clearness of diction, as to be a model for all
future writers in the same field. When he does not know
the cause of any lesion he does not hesitate to say so : here
are no hypotheses to mislead, no traditional maxims which
will one day have to be unlearned. Well might the Patho-
logical Society at its origin in 1846 place the bust of this
first of British pathologists upon its seal. And well justified
are those words which grace his monument in Westminster
Abbey, " Qui ad certiorem rationis normam, eas anatomice
partes, quce morbos spectant, primus redegit^
Brodie, writing at least fifty years after its first issue,
states that Baillie's work *' is still the most valuable text-
book on that subject that exists . . . It is perfect as far
as it goes." ^
I do not know that it would be possible to illustrate in a
more striking manner the place and influence of the
Hunters in the development of Medical Science than by
contrasting two works, issued at but thirty years interval.
Let us take Gaubius's Pathology, the work of a man accounted
a leader — he succeeded his master Boerhaave at Leyden —
and he was even a reformer, so that he excuses himself in his
preface for the innovations he has made. It was published
in 1761, and is an able book, yet full of vague generalities
and ideas which have come down by tradition. And these
are his closing words, " Unless I am mistaken his authority
will remain to Hippocrates, credit to Galen, strength and
order to Nature." — Ni fallor, Hippocrati auctoritas sua
constiterity Oaleno fides, naturce virtus et ratio.
1 Autobiography, p. 1S7.
RISE OP MAN-MIDWIFERY. 29
Compare with this Baillie's Morbid Anatomy, .issned in
1793. To pass from Gaubius to Baillie is like going out of
darkness into light. And this advance in Medical Science,
fruitful presently in better medical art, was due, as I submit,
mainly to the Hunters, whose anatomical and physio-
logical work Baillie continued and carried into the domain
of pathology and medicine.
WILLIAM HUNTER AS AN OBSTETRICIAN.
The art of midwifery was passing in the middle of the
eighteenth century through a severe struggle. When Smell ie
settled in London in 1739 the bulk of the practice was in
the hands of midwives. Mrs. Nihell, of the Haymarket,
who afterwards published a treatise on the subject, had a
large practice, and was a doughty and uncompromising
champion of the exclusive right of her own sex to practise
the art. Between her and Smell ie, who lived hard by in
Pall Mall, there was unceasing war. There were indeed men
physicians devoted to this art, but when they were called
in it was often only to advise the midwife, the patient not
permitting herself to be touched. When William Hunter
attended the young Queen of George III. he merely waited
in an ante-room in case the midwife needed his assistance.
The principal men-midwives when Smellie and Hunter
began to work were Dr. Maubray and Sir R. Manningham.
Of the former it need only be mentioned that he stated a
decided preference for a seven months' over a nine months'
gestation, on account of the influence of the moon and the
mystical value of the number seven. Manningham was of
a better order, and long enjoyed a high reputation in London,
where he founded the first maternity institution. He
detected the imposture of Mary Tofts, the ** rabbit-breeder."
Yet so far was the art in its infancy that in his compendium,
published in the year that Smellie commenced practice, no
mention is made of any sort of instruments. Instruments,
however, were in use, but mainly of a destructive kind, and
it was Smel lie's earnest desire to find better methods, so
that in difficult cases the child's life should not be sacrificed,
that brought him to London.
WILLIAM SMBLLIB.
It will be convenient to say a little more here of William
Smellie, who has found in recent years so excellent a vatea
30 WILLIAM SMELLIE.
sacer in Dr. Glaister, to whose work I am indebted for much
information.
He came from the same connty as the Hnnters and Cnllen,
having been born in Lanark some twenty years before
William Hunter. Engaged at first in general practice in his
native town, he took a keen interest in midwifery work, and
came to London, as has already been said, to seek for
improvements in his practice and methods. He went to
Paris to Gregoire, then in much fame, but he was dis-
appointed in him and in the other French teachers. Smellie
settled in London in 1739, and practised and taught mid-
wifery to large classes. His success was great ; he had
mechanical genius, and he studied the use of the forceps,
then newly invented by the Chamberlens, until he had
mastered the subject. He was the first writer to lay down
rules for the safe application of the forceps, and as such is
entitled to the gratitude and honour of all men. William
Hunter, who was conservative in his midwifery practice,
discouraged its employment, although he probably used it
sometimes ; he would say that he rather regretted the
invention of the instrument, as he thought it had done more
harm than good. Partly in consequence of Hunter's teach-
ing, the use of the forceps, which had obtained a good deal
of currency in Smellie's time, fell into disfavour towards
the end of the eighteenth century, until Baudelocque and
others restored it to its rightful place.
Smellie was uncultured, and unpleasing to those of polite
manners, so that he never acquired large practice amongst
the upper classes, skilful practitioner though he was. He tells
us that in one labour, " I sweated so much that I was
obliged to throw off my waistcoat and wig, and put on my
nightgown, with a thin napkin over my head." I know not
how far our leading obstetricians of to-day would regard
this as a dignified costume. William Hunter, on the other
hand, was urbane and conciliatory, and was singularly
calculated for the practice of midwifery, Baillie tells us, "by
the delicacy of his manners, and a very quick perception of
the caprices of the world." ^
Smellie retired from London to end his days quietly in
Lanark, (where the battered remnants of his library.
1 Lectures^ p. 75. Compare the " Eloge " upon W. Hunter in the Acad^mie Rojale des
Sciences. "II fut trds-heureux pour les Dames Angloises, que M. Hunter unit k une
habilet^ pour le moins 4gale, la douceur et les agrSmens dont I'austdre et savant Smellie
EYoit ^t^ priv^," quoted in Memoir ofStnellie^ New Syd. Soc.
}
WILLIAM HUNTER AS OBSTETRICIAN.
31
I
I
beqneathed for tlie benefit of the town, are Btill to be seen),
reviBing his collections of cases, and publishinp; them to the
world. For some years before this, he and Hunter, once
intimate, had somewhat diverged, and Hunter tried in vain
to arrange an interview between them before the former
departed. Smellie avoided it, and wrote a curious letter
from his Scottish retreat to Dr. Clephane, a mutual friend,
to explain his reasons, quaintly dating his epistle from
Tartarus, and addressing those still in the land of the living.
He was evidently afraid of Dr. Hunter, whose quick wit and
"glib tongue" wonld soon get the better of a silent man,
without any conversational powers outside hia professional
work. He sent also a " letter of exculpation," a very singular
and candid description of his own character.' Smellie was
a great practitioner and an admirable man, and probably
furthered the progress of hia art more than any other single
man in his century. He died childless in ITG'i.
William Hunter was for many years the acknowledged
leader in obstetric practice in London. In dealing with his
claims to distinction in Ihia department, I am glad to be
able to quote one who wrote with authority, the late Dr.
Matthews Duncan. In hia "Researches in Obstetrics"
{1868), Dr. Duncan quotes Dr. Hunter many times; for
example :— On the inclination of the axis of the uterus, the
plasticity of the uterus adapting itaelf to the shape of the
fcetus, the condition of the cervix during pregnancy, the
cause of the fcetal head being commonly downward, the
especial development of the cephalic end of the fcetus,
the posture of the child during the last months of gestation,
the early implantation of the placenta over the cervix, the
separation of the fcetal from the maternal portion of the
placenta in a four months' conception, and the operation of
Bympbyseotomy.
Smellie acknowledges the help derived from Hunter's
"reforming the wrong practice of delivering the placenta,"
i.e. leaving it more to natural efforts. And Hunter's lectures,
preserved to us in the notes of students, bear witness to his
thorough gi-asp of the practical issues of his art. He describes
for instance, clearly and simply, the occurrence of fever,
convulsions, white leg, hemiplegia, etc., in the puerperal
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32 WILLIAM HUNTER'S CHARACTER.
state, and his treatment, if rather conservative and inactive,
is at any rate free, alike from active hurtf ulness, and from a
pretence of specifics.^
Hunter described the retroversion of the gravid uterus
apparently for the first time, and proposed the name by
which the displacement is now known. His papers on this
subject are very clear and interesting.^
WILLIAM hunter's PERSONAL CHARACTER.
A few words remain to be said on William Hunter's
personal character. His many-sided tastes have been referred
to. It is wonderful, perhaps, that they did not hinder him
from attaining high distinction in his own profession. But
he had no wife nor child, and his museum was the recreation
of his leisure hours. A man of untiring industry, an early
riser, exact and orderly in his habits, thoughts and speech,
he combined the learning of a scholar with the refined
manners of a gentleman. He was kind, and he was just :
and if he was so conscious of his own abilities, and so
sensitive to praise or blame, that he sometimes appeared
jealous, sometimes even bitterly combative in his attitude to
others, such feelings did not long disturb his peace of mind.
"I am I believe one of the happiest of all men," he writes to
Cullen in 1768, " though my hurry is somewhat greater than
I could wish." 3
Of the vein of quaint humour which pleasantly varied the
course of his lectures, I may give one illustration. It was
in 1775, at the close of the session — he was approaching his
sixtieth year : " I have now finished," he said, '* twenty
years of lectures. However, as I presume I am still approved
of, I propose twenty years more to begin next October, and
after this is over, I propose to settle in the world and take
to me a wife."*
He was one who
" preserved from chance control
The fortress of his 'stablisht soul ;
In all things sought to see the whole ;
Brooked no disguise ;
And set his heart upon the goal,
Not on the prize." *
1 M.S. Lectures, R.O.S. 42. b. 34. 2 Med, Obs. lY. 400, Y. 388.
3 Thomson, I., 554. 4 M.S. Lectures, 42, c. 81.
5 W. Watson on Matthew Arnold.
EPOCH OF HIS DEATH. 33
I have thus sought to set William Hunter before you as a
great anatomist, and as a sound and successful practitioner
of medicine and midwifery.
** Verax : capax, perspicax : sagax, efficax : tenax."*
A teacher of renown and wide influence, he contributed
greatly, with his brother John Hunter, to establish medical
science and art upon the only sure foundation, that of
anatomy. May we not rightly speak of "the era of the
Hunters," and associate the two brothers together in the
great work they did for natural science ?
EPOCH OF hunter's DEATH.
Time will not admit of more than a brief allusion to the
epoch of William Hunter's death in 1783. It was a period
of great mental activity, and science was advancing with
giant strides. Already his friend, Sir Joseph Banks, had
entered upon his forty-two years' tenure of the chair of the
Royal Society, where he was surrounded by a constellation
of genius, every man taking rank as a discoverer of some
great new fact or law in Nature. The modern science of
chemistry was being rapidly evolved. Joseph Black,
Cnllen's pupil, had long discovered latent heat. Priestly had
lately found oxygen ; Lavoisier waff also at work, and air
and water had just been resolved into their elements by
Cavendish. The determination of colour vision by Dalton,
and Rumford's investigations on heat followed soon after.
Hunter's friend Franklin had discovered the pro})erties of
atmospheric electricity, and animal electricity and the nature
of currents were now coming to light by the labours of Galvani
and Volta ; but Faraday was yet unborn, and few of the secrets
of this wonderful science had been revealed. Thomas
Young and Wollaston, future leaders in physical science,
were mere youths, and Humphry Davy was in the nursery.
Mechanical applications of the laws of Nature were keeping
pace with their discovery. Watt had already invented the
steam-engine, and five years after Hunter's death it was
applied to navigation by sea, whilst Erasmus Darwin, with
the prescience of genius, was singing of its employment for
locomotion on land. Herschell meanwhile was bringing to
sight distant worlds and moons, by means of his giant
refractors.
' Pr. John Brown, Locke and Sydenham.
8
34 CONCLUSION.
Nor was it less an epoch of large political changes. The
American colonies were separating themselves on the one
hand, and on the other Governor Phillips was effecting the
first settlement on the Australian continent. The French
Revolution, like a dark cloud overhead, was about to burst
with thunderclap upon astonished Europe. The year 1769,
that year of momentous births, was passed, and had given
to the world Bonaparte, and his Generals, Ney and Soult
and Lannes ; Mehemet Ali of Egypt, our own Wellington,
Sydney Smith, Brunei, Humboldt, Sir Thomas Lawrence,
and William Smith, the father of English geology.
The science upon which our own art is founded is in its
turn built upon the physical sciences, and changes such as
have been alluded to, influenced, more slowly perhaps, yet
surely, the practice of medicine. The invention of the
stethoscope by Laennec soon after this date revolutionised
one department of medicine, as did later on the adaptation
of the microscope to medical purposes, by the discoveries of
Selligues and of J. J. Lister (father of Lord Lister).
The Brunonian system had its rise at this epoch, and lived
its little day. Vaccination was discovered by William
Hunter's pupil, Jenner, thirteen years after his death. The
great Hunterian pupils, Abernetby and Astley Cooper,
Anthony Carlisle, Cline and Clift, Macartney of Dublin,
Physick of Philadelphia, were mostly boys at school. So
were Henry Hal ford (Vaiighan) and Charles Bell.
So full was the world of new thoughts and new knowledge,
thus instinct with life and progress were the natural
sciences, and such was the promise of the future, when the
Hunters, who had done so much to lead men to the pure
study of Nature, were passing away. Their work in biology
had made the discoveries of others possible : for each
generation, stepping on the shoulders of that which went
before it, attains to heights that were as yet unknown. That
we may not forget the great men who have gone before, but
may remember how the precious heritage of our knowledge
has been bought for us by the strenuous toil of giants in
the past, is the purpose of orations such as this. And it is
with that aim that I have brought before you this evening
William Hunter, a man *' by his life and by his art worthy
of honour from all men to the end of time." — KaipiovKairexvfic
do^ai^ofiBvog 'irapd ndtriv dvOpfuiroig tig tov ael xpovov.^
Hippocrates, Oath.
Appendix.
THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM, GLASGOW.
" Dr. W. Hunter's Collections were of extraordinary
variety, considering the evidence that he took an active
personal interest in every department. It is marvellous that
he attained to such professional eminence while spreading
his energies over so many fields.
*'The illustrations of the 'Gravid Uterus' and of the
Placenta are the most important in connection with his
reputation as an obstetrician, and one of these has received
his own sanction as specially worthy of attention, the
specimen namely, which was introduced into the portrait by
Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted to the commission of the
University of Glasgow : it is injected and windowed so as to
show the membranes through which the foetus is visible.^
The collection is essentially anatomical, including a large
series of comparative preparations, made in connection with
the Zoological Department^ which is still steadily growing.
"This department, the central portion of the present
collection, was, for the time and for a private museum, very
large, and included a surprising variety of types, among
others the Elephant, Giraffe, and Moose-deer. It is not
possible now to identify the Hunterian Specimens as a
whole, for apparently there were no labels on them when
the museum was brought to Glasgow. But among the
Invertebrates, in addition to a large series illustrating
* Conchology ' in the old sense of the term, there are a
> The spedmen is No. 158 of series forty-eight, in Dr. Teacher's Catalogue.
36 THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM, GLASGOW.
Pentacrinus, dilapidated as to the cup, and the type
specimens of Ellis and Solander's work on the Corals,
gathered on Cook^s Transit Expedition, 1774.
"The Minerals which came from London are more
distinctly recognisable, and an important series they were
both scientifically and in point of value ; the collection is
now trebled by the gifts of Eck and Dr. Brown of Lanfine.
Among Hunter's papers occur brief notes of minerals
indicating the care with which he gathered information
regarding the specimens. Mr. John Young, LL.D., Under-
keeper to the Museum, has added to the Geological Section,
so that it is now a valuable teaching collection in lithology,
especially rich in the Carboniferous fossils. The other
formations are fairly represented. The Pleistocene is rich
from the work of D. Robertson, LL.D., Rev. Dr. H. W.
Crosskey, and J. Young, LL.D.
** There was nothing corresponding to the modern
meaning of Ethnology ^ but there is a very large assortment
of weapons, implements etc., belonging to Cook's collections.
Unlabelled as these were, identification with localities is
impossible, except in the case of some which have been
figured in the Narrative of the Voyages, as the Corals above
mentioned in the monograph.
*' Round an anatomist-physician's museum gathered an
important Bibliographic collection, and this too was
Hunter's personal care. There are marked catalogues of
book sales, letters from agents at home and abroad, all
showing that Hunter selected what was bought. The
dealers' accounts were gone over carefully and checked.
Large purchases were made in Paris and even Italy :
volumes, sometimes series, came from monastic houses, or
from private libraries, as those of Caesar de Mussy, Colbert,
etc., while a noble array of the Fathers bears the fleur de lis
on the binding, but is only a part of the Royal property
purchased. Most of the important Continental and English
presses are represented. The Caxtons were recorded by
Blades. The Aldine Plato on vellum, bound by Derome iu
blue morocco, is perhaps the most exquisite book in the
Library. Alongside may be placed the vellum Greek
Anthology, and the Vesalius, also on vellum, with theTitiau
plates, a work reproduced in facsimile by Stirling-Maxwell.
A catalogue is now in course of preparation, and the section
containing the fifteenth-century works, described by Rev. P.
H. Aitken, has been made use of by Jenkinson in his
DESCRIPTION OF THE MUSEUM. 87
recently published revision of Coppinger's additions to Hain.
There is an interesting set of pamphlets regarding the North
American Colonies, many concerning the time of Charles
the first, and a whole library on the small-pox.
"The Manuscripts number over 600, excluding those
which date from 1700 or thereby. The oldest is the
Homilies of St. Basilius, A.D. 859. The Romaunt of the
Rose, in French and in English, the Golden Legend, the
Siege of Troy, the Canterbury Tales, Gower's Confessio
Amantis and Vox Clamantis may be mentioned. Among
illuminated MSS. are the Vita Christi, Boccaccio's Cas de
Nobles Hommes et Femmes and the Cent Nouvelles
Nouvelles. Bayer's Sinological MSS. have been catalogued
and the list is published by Henri Cordier. A large number
of the English manuscripts came from the Eastern Counties,
Dr. Thomas Martin's autograph appearing on many of them.
A list of this collection, not free from errors, is given by
Haenel in his Catalog! Librorum MSS., but a new and
more accurate catalogue is now in preparation, and nearly
completed.
" The first Professor of Anatomy in the Royal Academy
earned that position by his artistic proclivities as well as his
reputation as an Anatomist. His diploma hangs in the
Library, as does also a set of Engravings by Sir Robert
Strange selected by the Engraver himself. There are many
works in the Library selected obviously for their artistic
contents. Thus Eisen, Gravelot, Moreau, Audran, etc., are
well represented and there are three perfect copies of the
Hypnerotomachia. Of the great Masters whose works adorn
the Museum, Murillo, Rembrandt, De Koninck, Le Nain,
Rubens, Salvator Rosa, Domenichino, Guido, Giordano,
Charadin, Karl du Jardin, may be mentioned. Some of
these were in Dr. Mead's collection and on his death acquired
by Hunter. Among the Medical portraits are those of
Vesalius by Titian, Mead and Charlton by Kneller,
W. Hunter by Pine, Harvey by Bemmel, and Dr. Matthew
Baillie. Kneller is also represented by the portrait of Sir
Isaac Newton.
"The Goin cabinet is an extreme departure from the
customary interests of a physician and anatomist. Yet the
private papers show how unceasing was Hunter's care and
how lavish his expenditure to make the collection complete.
Part was catalogued by his friend Dr. C. Combe and
published during Hunter's lifetime, in 1782, as the
as THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM, GLASGOW.
Nummorum veterum Populorum et Urhium qui in Museo
Qulielmi Hunter asservantur Description figuris illustrata^
a work still spoken of with admiration for its accuracy.
The munificence of a Glasgow merchant, Mr. James
Stevenson, (Maecenas in respect of his Italian possessions,)
has enabled a new edition of that catalogue to be undertaken,
and the first volume, illustrated by collotypes, is now
published. It is practically a new work, as Mr. George
Macdonald, M.A., has included all the Colonial imperial
pieces, as well as the whole of the British, Gaulish and
Spanish Mints. But the republican money, the Imperial
gold, silver and bronze greatly outnumber these, and the
Western Empire is continued in a rich set of Papal and
other Italian medals. The English and Scottish coinages
are copiously represented, and there is a choice group of
Renascence medals besides those in the Papal series. The
whole collection numbers about 30,000 pieces." ^
Dr. Combe's Catalogue **was far ahead of anything known
at the time." For the first time, the weight, metal and size
of every coin was stated. It was dedicated to the Queen,
and the Latin preface states that upwards of £20,000 had
been eicpended on the collection. A manuscript account by
Dr. Hunter, preserved at Glasgow, accounts for more than
£22,000. The Catalogue was to have extended over seven
volumes, and the last of these, comprising the Saxon issues,
had been committed to the Rev. R. Southgate.^ The other
volumes were to include (1) continuation of Dr. Combe's
division, (2) money of Persia, Phoenicia, Samaria, Palmyra,
Carthage, etc., (3) coins of the Kings, (4) Imperial coins
struck in the Colonies and Greek cities, and (5) unpublished
Roman coins. But all was interrupted by Hunter's death
in 1783.3
The visitor should not omit to see the fine Armada medal,
struck to commemorate the event and throwing a singular
light on the feeling of the time. The Spanish ships with
their great curved hulls are shown in a storm at sea, the
scene being exquisitely moulded. On the reverse is seen a
* "The finest eyergot together by a private indiyidual" (Macdonald). The foregoing
paragraphs haye been kindly contributed by Professor John Young, M.D., the Keeper of
the Museum, than whomno one can speak of its stores with more right or fuller knowledge.
' See Oentlemati' s Magazine^ 1782, p. 619.
' See Mr. G. Macdonald' s Introduction to the Hunter Coin Cabinet, Steventon
Catalogue of Coins^ 1899, 4to, Vol.i. A. Catalogue of duplicates was printed in 1777,
4to ; their sale occupied eight days, and realised £1,337. A second smaller sale followed in
1778.
HISTORY OF THE MUSEUM. 39
semi-circle of popes, seated upon thrones, and kicking
'^ against the pricks/' in the shape of a forest of needles
standing upright.^
The Museum was left, under the direction of Trustees, for
the use of Hunter's nephew Matthew Baillie, in conjunction
with Cruikshank, for the term of thirty years, and after that
to the University of Glasgow. Cruikshank died in 1800,
Baillie waived his right soon afterwards, and the Museum
was removed in 1807. A fund of £8,000 was set apart in
Hunter's will for the support and increase of the collection,
and to promote its utility to the public, by means of lectures,
etc., besides annuities of twenty pounds each to his three
Trustees, Fordyce, Pitcairn and Combe, for thirty years.^
Dr. George Fordyce, F.R.S., (1736-1802) was physician to
St. Thomas's Hospital, and long lectured on Chemistry and
Materia Medica ; he took an important part in preparing the
Pharmacopoeia Londinensis. A rather eccentric man of
. rough exterior, he had original views on diet, subsisting
' himself upon one meal a day, taken punctually at four
* o'clock at Dolly's Chop-house in Paternoster Row. The
' meal consisted of a pound and a half of steak, a tankard of
ale, a bottle of port wine, and a quarter of a pint of brandy.
He died of gout.
Dr. David Pitcairn, F.R.S., (1749-1809) was nephew to
Dr. William Pitcairn, of the '* Currus triumphalis Opii."
He was physician to St. Bartholomew's Hospital, and a man
of much sagacity and high culture, with a fund of dry
humour ; he was greatly mourned by his friends, when
acute laryngitis ended his life.^
Dr. Charles Combe, F.R.S., (1743-1817) was of antiquarian
tastes, and eminent as a collector of coins ; he also produced
a famous edition of Horace. Dr. Combe took up Obstetric
practice, and became physician to the British Lying-in
* The following exemplifies the free nse of the Museum granted by Dr. Hunter to
strangers : *' On Monday every door of Dr. Hunter's Museum was opened to my leisure.
His books, his medals, and his natural curiofities, which last are very numerous, and dassed
so well as to be of real use to any Naturalist." Bev. Michael Tyson to B. Gough. May 4,
1776. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, VIII. 620.
* Hunter left £19,000 at his death. Besides the bequests just stated, he left an annuity
of £100 to Ms sister Mrs. Baillie, and a sum of £2,000 to each of her two daughters. The
residue, which was devised to Matthew Baillie, proved a very small one. '' It was his
intention," he told his nephew. " to leave him but little money, as he had derived too much
pleasure from making his own fortune to deprive him of doing the same." See p. 27, and
Wardrop's Life of Baillie. It is said that the Museum cost him £100,000.
' A letter to Baillie respecting the removal of the Museum is among the Hunter-Baillie
MSS., vol. iii. p. 165.
40 THE HUNTERIAN MUSEUM, GLASGOW.
Hospital. He published an illustrated description of some
of the Hunter coins in 1782 as already mentioned, and he
made an effort after Hunter's death to keep the coins
permanently in London.^
The Hunterian Museum was at first housed in a handsome
Grecian temple built for the purpose, at a cost of £12,000, in
the gardens of the University in High Street, Glasgow.
Since the erection of the new University on Gilmore Hill in
1870, the Museum has been transferred thither, and is now
displayed in a series of fine rooms, where its treasures have
become better known, although scarcely yet as widely as
they deserve : the available space is already insufficient.
A general account of the Museum was published in 1813
by Captain Laskey. No further Catalogue appeared until
1840, when a ** Catalogue of the Anatomical Preparations "
was published. The text of this was supplied by the
Manuscript Catalogue transmitted to the University long
before by the Trustees (and still in the Museum), which
bears the inscription : " The following Catalogue is, to the
best of our knowledge and belief, a true Catalogue of the
Anatomical Preparations left by the late Dr. William
Hunter. (Signed) G. Fordyce, David Pitcairn, W. Combe."
The last survivor of these had been dead for more than
twenty years, but the custodians had collated the specimens
(! and corrected errors as far as they were able ; there were
many specimens missing, and many others undescribed.
The Catalogue formed a volume of 290 pages and was
divided into Sections.
No further catalogue of the Museum was, so far as appears,
issued until recent years. Its contents have been more fully
studied by the present custodians, and excellent catalogues
of several departments have been published. Professor
Young's address on the Library has been alluded to (see p.
11,) and a list of the Paintings and Engravings was
published by him some years ago. Mr. Macdonald's
Catalogue of the Coin collection is noticed on a preceding
page.
A full and accurate Catalogue of the Anatomical and
Pathological Preparations has just been issued (1900) in two
volumes, by the liberal aid of the Bellahouston Trustees and
the indefatigable labours of Dr. J. H. Teacher. The entire
,!'•
Dr. Teacher, Introduction, p. Ixziii.
RECENT CATALOGUES. 41
series has been examined, the jars opened, and the objects
and their descriptions as nearly as possible identified, with
the help of all information that could be gleaned from
Hunter's writings and other sources.
This department of the Museum consists of 2607 wet
preparations preserved in jars, 19 large plaster of Paris casts,
410 bones, and 348 calculi and concretions. It is divided
into eleven classes; that of Utero-gestation contains 271
specimens, including casts from the originals of Dr. Hunter's
plates of the Gravid Uterus, and Placentae showing the
maternal and fcEtal circulation. Upwards of one hundred
of the plates in Dr. Baillie's "Series of Engravings to
illustrate Morbid Anatomy," (London, 4to., 1803,) were taken
from these preparations.
WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
[-4 list of the works will be found at the end of this chapter.']
William Hunter's greatest work is the Anatomy of the
Human Gravid Uterus, which has been already described,^
and which was published in 1774, and again in 1815. Two
of the smaller plates were reproduced by Hogben in his
" Anatomical Tables of Midwifery " in 1811, and Hunter's
entire work was re-issued, from the original copper-plates,
very little worn, by the Sydenham Society, in 1851. This
work has ever been highly valued on the continent of Europe
as well as in our own country. Soemmering published in
his *' Icones Embryonum humanorum," in 1799, two plates
of the human embryo, which should form, as he said, a
supplement to those of Hunter, to whom he refers as " Vir
ille summus, fautor noster insignis." Hunter's plates were
all or most of them copied by Loder in his "Tabulae
Anatomicae " (Vimariae, 1803), but the execution is inferior
and the size generally reduced. To the names of the
German Biologist and the St. Petersburg Professor may be
added that of a renowned Italian. Caldani, the physiologist,
crowned his many works by the issue in his old age of four
magnificent volumes, ** Icon es Anatom jcae." ^ In these he
included the whole of Hunter's plates7'which form Nos.
135 to 167 of the series, but although the engraving
is excellent, the work of the Italian artists (Zuliani
and Ambrosi) does not come up to that of Rymsdyk *
1 See p. 18.
> Venioe, 1801-1813, elephant folio.
« This artist spelt his name indifferently, J. Van Bymsdyk, Biemsdyk, and Beimsdyk.
WORKS ON THE GRAVID UTERUS. 43
in Hunter's original volume. The delicacy and softness of
the latter bespeak a labour of love, in which neither time
nor cost were an object, and they are only equalled by
William Cliffs drawing of the placenta of a monkey to
illustrate the works of John Hunter.
In 1794, eleven years after Hunter^s death, appeared An
Anatomical Description of the Human Or avid Uterus and
its Contents^ the text of which had been left in manuscript
by Hunter, and was now published by his nephew. Dr.
Matthew Baillie, with a few corrections, and the addition of
some pages at the end. A second edition was issued by
Dr. E. Rigby in 1843. The part contributed by Baillie con-
tains the mistaken account of the origin of the Decidua
which has been already alluded to. ^ One sentence from
this treatise was much quoted by Dr, Robert Lee in his
controversy (1839-1848) on the nerves of the uterus. It
is as follows : "[I^annot take upon me to say what change
happens to the system of uterine nerves from utero-
gestation, but I suspect them to be enlarged in some
proportion as the vessels are/^ This sentence is a good
example of Hunterian dicta : for it betokens a wide view of
the subject, which left nothing out, a judicial temper, which
stated nothing as a fact that observation had not first proved,
and lastly a faculty of insight, leading to shrewd opinion,
which might wait perhaps a century for its verification.
Dr. Lee, who by the way omitted the word * some ' near the
end of the sentence, maintained stoutly against all critics
that the nerves of the uterus were enlarged during
pregnancy. Astley Cooper called his preparations "cart
ropes and chain-cables," and it was several years before the
heat of the controversy died down, but Lee's views received
in the end a considerable measure of acceptance. ^
William Hunter is sometimes alluded to as one of the
pioneers of Ovariotomy, but this credit belongs probably
less to him than to Pott and to Blundell. His observations
on the extirpation of diseased ovaries occur in the admirable
Remarks on the Cellular Membrane and on Dropsies which
were appended to his paper on Emphysema read in 1757. ^
"It has been proposed indeed," he says, "by modern
* See p. 18.
* Dr. Alexander Morison has lately reTived the subject, and published some obseryations
which favour tbe opposite view, whidi was John Hunter's. Lancet^ 1898, vol ii. p. 1612.
> Med. Obs. and Inquiries, See List of Works, and p. 22.
44 WILLIAM HUNTElR'S WORKS.
Surgeons, deservedly of the first reputation, to attempt a
radical cure by incision and suppuration, or by the excision
of the cyst." He goes on to discuss the nature of the ovarian
cyst, "as it has appeared to me in a number of cases both in
the living and dead body." He concludes by pointing out
the great and almost overwhelming dangers of the operation ;
but concludes : " surely, in a case otherwise so desperate, it
might be adviseable to do it, could we know beforehand that
the circumstances would admit of such treatment."
Dr. Hunter's paper on the Sigaultean operation for
Division of the Symphysis Pubis is dated 1778, and was
published as a supplement to a treatise by Dr. Vaughan of
Leicester. ^ This operation had just been introduced with
great eclat by eminent surgeons in France. Dr. Hunter
writes in a philosophical spirit. He deprecates desperate
operations undertaken on a bare chance of saving life, and
declares that the life of the mother is of incomparably
greater value than that of an unborn child. He questions
the wisdom of the early approbation of a new practice by an
authoritative body such as the Faculty of Medicine at Paris.
He illustrates the question of new methods by the use of the
forceps, which, though it was sometimes of service, and
might save either the mother or child, and had been some-
times used by him with advantage, yet "I am clearly of
opinion . . . that the forceps (midwifery instruments in
general I fear), upon the whole, has done more harm than
good." With regard to the operation itself, he had had
occasion to perform it often upon dead bodies, and found
that an adequate separation of the bones required much
wrenching, and that the (sacro-iliac) ligaments at the back
of the pelvis were torn. He then showed from actual
examination of some contracted pelves for which the
Caesarian section had been used, that the contraction was
such that no division of the symphysis could have per-
mitted a child to pass.
Was the operation advisable to save the child in certain
difficult labours, where the crotchet was now used ? He
preferred the crotchet because it was safer for the mothers,
and gave less suffering than ** to have the strongest joints of
their body cut and torn asunder, to secure a chance only of a
living child ." Yet he thought the section of the Symphysis
^ It wan read before the " Medical Society of Physicians " but never published in the
Medical Observations^ although Osbora (footnote top. 318 of his Essays on Midwifery)
states otherwise.
ON OBSTETRIC OPERATIONS. 45
might possibly be found better than the CaBsarian section in
a very few rare cases, — to save the mother's life ; cases of
very narrow pelvis, or great projection of the spine, so that
the crotchet could not be used until division of the
symphysis had made room for it. Such an operation, an^
indeed all operative measures in midwifery, should only be
used after due " consultation and formality." Osborn, in
1792, argues at length against Hunter's admission, guarded
though it is, of Symphysiotomy as a possible resource under
any conditions, and the operation, though it has found some
supporters since that day, has been generally abandoned.
On the discovery by the Hunters of the placental structure
and circulation, reference may be made to jTohn Hunter's
paper (not published by the Royal Society on account of the
dispute with his brother as to priority), which is contained
in his collected Works.^ A critique upon it is added by
Professor Owen, dealing with Dr. Lee's opinions in
opposition to the Hunters' doctrine, and relating experiments
of his own which confirm it. Dr. Horrocks, in the Hunterian
Society's Oration for 1898, quotes W. Hunter's description of
the Placenta, and places it side by side with the most recent
exposition of its anatomy by Leopold of Dresden, showing
their agreement in essential features. The dispute between
the brothers arose, if we are to believe Jesse Foot, about a
morbid specimen which John invited William to see, and
which William carried off for his Museum. But perhaps
there was never a work of more singular scandal and
malignity than Foot's "Life of John Hunter," published
under the cloak of an honourable love of truth, and pursuing
its victim in his new-made grave. *' John Hunter," he says,
"never was the author of any production which appeared
under his name " : Smollett wrote them for him. His plate
of the Placenta "gives just as good an idea of the country
in the moo7i as it does of that which it is intended to
explain : — it will serve for either." ^
W. Hunter^s paper On the Uncertamty of the signs of
Murder in the case of Bastard Children, alluded to on page
23, long occupied an important place in the field of Legal
» Ed. Palmer, vol. iv. p. 60. See above, pp. 13, 17.
■ Foot, Life of John Hunter, pp. 62, 222. Foot's illwill may have been in part an expression
of that prejudice against the Hunters as Scotchmen, which according to Agnes 13aillie was
very rife in their lifetime and afterwards. See her notes on the Pedigree of the Hunters,
Hunter- Baillie MSS. Compare Horace Walpole's anecdote, quoted on another page.
46 WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
Medicine. Its reprint by Dr. Samuel Farr in 1815 has been
already mentioned, and in the same year it was appended to
the third English edition of Faselius' " Elements of Medical
Jurisprudence." The paper was also separately published
in 1818, and it has been translated into at least one European
language.^ Dr. William Cummin in 1836 included it in his
little volume on " The Proofs of Infanticide," and he writes
of it, fifty-three years after Hunter's death, as " the most
influential and popular tract on Child-murder hitherto
produced in this country." " The judges quote it," he
continues, " with implicit faith in its perfection : the bar
study it, and cross-examine the crown witnesses on the
difficulties which it suggests ; and medical men probably
will not find it safe to venture into the witness-box without
being familiarly acquainted with its contents." Dr. Cummin,
however, sets himself to controvert the author's positions,
and especially the objections which Hunter felt to the
certainty of the test of the lungs floating in water, as a sign
that the child had lived. Hunter's paper has often been
quoted since by writers on Medical Jurisprudence, and
although it was obviously written for a special purpose, — to
show the uncertainty of signs which at that day were regarded
as infallible proofs of guilt, and of guilt meriting the penalty
of death, and therefore it partakes slightly of a partisan
spirit ; yet it is a masterly exposition of its subject, and still
worthy of careful study by those who would know all the
considerations which must be taken into account, in judging
of the actions of women under the dreadful conditions of
illegitimate childbirth.
Dr. Gooch, in his " Practical Compendium of Midwifery,"
1831, refers to W. Hunter's observations on rabbits, as having
confirmed and given general credence in this country to
De Graaf's discovery of the descent of the ovum through the
Fallopian tube. Hunter's experience in a case in which the
production of abortion was attempted at the third month of
pregnancy is also referred to.^
Darwin has preserved a notable instance of Hunter's
practice of testing received opinions. On the belief that the
imagination of the mother affects the child in utero, he writes :
> An Italian translation is included in the second volume of the JRaeeolta di Trattati e
memorie di legislazione e giurisprudenza eriminale. Firenise, 1821, 1822.
» Gooch, pp. 78, 92.
MEDICAL COMMENTARIES. 47
" Dr. William Hunter, in the last century, told my father ^
that during many years every woman in a large London
Lying-in Hospital was asked before her confinement whether
anything had specially affected her mind, and the answer
was written down ; and it so happened that in no one
instance could a coincidence be detected between the woman's
answer and any abnormal structure ; but when she knew the
nature of the structure, she frequently suggested some fresh
cause." 2
Smellie and William Hunter stand at the head of the line
of British leaders in Obstetric Medicine. After their day
came Denman,^ whose daughter Matthew Baillie married,
and who was father to Lord Chief-Justice Denman ; and
after him Osborn, Haighton, Merriman, Gooch, Blundell,
Ramsbotham and many others. In Blundell's portrait, by
Room, one may read, amongst the volumes which adorn his
bookshelves, the title, " W. Hunter's Works."
Dr. Hunter's Medical GommentarieSy Part I., issued in
1762, was intended as the first of a series of similar works.
It deals with physiological topics, — of the injection of the
tubes of the testis and epididymis with mercury ; of the
lymphatic vessels, previously accounted to be blood-vessels,
and of their function as absorbents like the lacteals*; of
transudation from veins, and whether they absorb as well ;
of the vessels of cartilage, where the author confesses a
mistaken observation in his first paper before the Royal
Society ; of the discovery of the ducts of "the lachrymal
gland ; of the membrana pupillaris ; of the insensibility of
tendons and Haller's views thereon (there was no dispute
with him) ; and of what is now called congenital hernia.
In most of these subjects Dr. Hunter had made discoveries,
some of much importance — discoveries described in his
lectures, which, unlike those of Callen, were never printed.
In these researches he had sometimes been anticipated by
others, for there were working in Europe at this time not a
few keen and able anatomists. Much material too, in the
^ Grandfather (?). Charles Darwin's father was bom seventeen years only before
Hunter's death.
* The Variation of Animals and Plant s^ vol. i., p. 364.
' Denman dedicated the first two editions of his Ussay on the Puerperal Fever to
W. Hunter.
* At p. 58 is recorded a curious case of Ijrmphatic fistula in the groin, the closure of which
was followed by lymphatic oedema of the whole limb, which ultimately subsided. Sografi
expounded Hunter's doctrines, a few years later : Exercitatio anatomico-chirurgica . . .
in qua theoria lymphas ductuum ex observationibus Hunteri, Monroi etpropriis ezponitur,
Patayii, 1766.
LANE MEDICAL LIBRARY
STANFORD UNIVERSITY
48 WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
volume, was derived from John Hunter's labours, and this
is generously acknowledged by his brother. But Dr. Hunier
was most unfortunate in his manner of presenting his claims
to the world. His Commentaries are couched in a style of
address that has happily become extinct in these days,
jealousy for his own fame leading him into bitter contro-
versy with other workers in the same field, so that it is
hardly to be regretted that, beyond a supplement added in
1764, containing his dispute with Pott, no further parts of
these Commentaries were ever issued, for the style increases
in acerbity to the very last pages of the supplement. It is
said that Smollett revised the work after Hunter had written
it ; perhaps the sharpest arrows were barbed by the author
of Peregrine Pickle}
His principal antagonists in controversy were Alexander
Monro, father and son. Alexander Monro Secundus was a
younger man than his opponent, whose lectures he at one
time attended, and he lived on to the enjoyment of an old
age not granted to the Hunters. The great Edinburgh
anatomist's treatises between 1758 and 1762 are full of con-
troversy with Hunter, with Hewson, and with Akenside,
pursued in a like ungenerous spirit, though his pen is not
quite so trenchant as Hunter's.^ When Monro's Memoir
and collected essays were published under the filial care of
Monro Tertius in 1840 the dust of the war of pens had long
been laid, and little reference is made to its heat and bitter-
ness. The disputes " may have had their use by rousing the
energies of both parties," but it now matters little whether
the one or the other were first in the field ; each did noble
work in adding to the store of knowledge.
Percival Pott was five years Hunter's senior. He replied
to the strictures contained in the Commentaries^ but did not
descend to use the tone adopted by his antagonist.^
A singular illustration (probably authentic) of Hunter's
bitter tongue and pen is preserved at the Royal College of
Surgeons. It is a facsimile letter appended to a black and
» Smollett's part in it is well known, according to Dr. Teacher (Introduction to
Catalogue) . Simmons calls the style " correctand spirited ! " A second edition was published
in 1777, appareutly without anychange.
» See Observations^ . . wherein Dr. Hunter* s Claim to some Discoveries is
examined. By A. Monro, Jun., M.D., Edinburgh, 1768. An Expostulatory Epistle to
Hunter was published in 1762.
» Pott's Works, by Earle, new edition, 1808, Vol. I., p. xvi. ; Vol. II., p. 116, footnote.
Another critic was Dr. J. Gamer, whose Observations on Dr. Hunter* s Medical Commen-
taries are noticed adversely in the Critical RevieiVf Jan. 1763, p. 70.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURES. 49
white caricature portrait (noticed on another page) and runs
as follows : " Dr. Hunter is sorry that Mr. Da Costa has
taken so much trouble. It is a thing of very little conse-
quence, but cannot be set right because it was very wrong.
Mr. Dacosta's owning that it was wrong is enough. But it
must remain so. Dr. Hunter chuses no further dealings. —
He thinks Mr. Drury likewise has behaved in a way which
he should not have expected. But if they are pleased with
themselves he has nothing to say. N.B. 10 January 1771."^
Perhaps no treatment received by Hunter would fully
justify such an epistle. Yet we are not to conclude that he
was a proud supercilious man, insensible to nobler feelings.
The fast friend of the gentle Fothergill, the chosen inter-
mediary in a difficult mission with Hume, the physician
who won the Queen's warm regard, who enjoyed a life-long
fellowship with men like Cttllen and Pitcairn, and whose
high sense of duty led him to spend the strength of a life-
time in teaching to others all he knew, his was no mean or
selfish nature. A sensitive mind, too conscious of its own
power and rights, a lonely heart, unsoftened by domestic
love, these left Hunter sometimes the prey of resentments
which were ill-natured and bitter. They brought their own
Nemesis, for they lessened the sum of his happiness.
Two Introductory Lectures to Dr. Hunter's last course of
Anatomical Lectures at his Theatre in Windmill Street
were printed by order of the Trustees in 1784, the- year
after his death, as they were left corrected for the Press by
himself.*
In the first lecture Dr. Hunter traces the origin of Ana-
tomical study in early ages, and gives an account of Aristotle
and Galen, filling in the outline of history in such a way as
shows him to be no mean student. After Galen anatomy
declined, and Hunter remarks here that when any man has
" carried his art far beyond all others, it seems to throw the
rest of the world into a kind of despair." Hopeless of im-
proving the art further, men do nothing, and in course of
time deify the great man, so that every page of his writings
^ The letter referB without doubt to the collecting of natural history specimens for
Hunter's Museum, a frequent source of contentions. Da Costa was a naturalist, especially
learned on fossils, a Jew by race. Unhappily his methods were far from straight, and he
was, I believe, in prison when this letter was written. Fothergill and Pulteney still helped
him in his troubles, and he attained fame afterwards as an author. Dm Drury was an
eager entomologist and a very upright m%n.
' The date of his revision seems to have been about 1776 ; see p. 58 of the Lectures.
60 WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
becomes infallible. " Such respect," he adds, " must always
be a mark of declining science."^ In the long period of
Arabian supremacy it was still translations from Galen that
ruled anatomical science, until the period of the Renaissance.
Here Hunter shows a keen sense of how much we owe to
Greek learning. He speaks very highly of Leonardo da
Vinci as an anatomist, and hopes to engrave and publish his
designs.
Here also is to be found Hunter's estimation of Harvey,
whom he places at a less exalted level than others had done,
and defends his position by argument drawn from a careful
study of the subject. The history of the Science is traced to
his own time, with notices of Albinus, Douglas and others
who had been his masters, as well as John Hunter, Hewson
and Cruikshank, all of whom he had " bred to Anatomy."
Hunter took no mean view of his art. The second lecture
opens with words from Fontenelle and from Cicero, to show
how the order and beauty of the human frame reveal a
divine intelligence.^ Who can consider these proofs, he
goes on, without longing for another life after this, when we
may see and comprehend the whole plan of the Creator in
forming the Universe and directing its operations ? Then he
passes to the use of Anatomy, and lays down doctrines which
have become in our day the foundation stones of medical
science. The study of the body in health must be the direct
road to the knowledge of disease. By an intimate acquaint-
ance with the economy of our bodies we may discover even
the seeds of disease. Anatomy is the basis not only of
Surgery but of Medicine. Who are they, he cries, who
" would persuade students that a little of Anatomy is enough
for a physician, and a little more too much for a surgeon ?
God help them : They have it not themselves, and are afraid
that others should get it." His foresight told him that the
most probable future improvements in physic " would arise
from a more general, and more accurate examination of
disease after death."
Going on to unfold the science of Anatomy by analytical
and synthetical methods, he speaks with just pride of his
own part. " I have collected such an anatomical apparatus
I The present author's copy of the Lectures contains at this point the quaint marginal
note in pencil, dated, it will be observed, the year after John Hunter died ; *• Amen. 1794.
Scripsit hoc the Devil."
" The like thought finds expression in the writings of a medical seer, whose wise and
gentle spirit has hardly yet found fitting reverence amongst us, the late Dr. H. G. Sutton.
Preface to Lectures on Medical Pathology ^ 1886,
HIS TEACHING OF ANATOMY. 51
as was never brought together in any age or country." He
himself continued his lectures from a sense of public duty.
It appears that more than twenty years before his death Dr.
Hunter felt compelled by pressure of other work, and
privation of natural rest, to give up his lectures, but his
hearers pressed upon him so earnestly to continue them, that
on deliberate reflection he thought it his duty to do so even
at much loss to himself. *' He conceived that a man may do
infinitely more good to the public by teaching his art, than
by practising it. The good effects of the latter must center
in the advantage of the few individuals that may be under
his care as patients ; but the influence of a teacher extends
itself to the whole nation, and descends to posterity." ^
These words breathe a noble spirit, and are worthy of the
man who set duty before fame or riches or the claims of old
age, and, when all these were his, rose from his last sick-bed
to lecture to his waiting students. Such a man was not only
a great Teacher, but a maker of Teachers for the generation
to come, — the leaders of Anatomical Science both in England
and America.^
Pursuing his theme, Hunter avows his own ignorance of
many questions relating to animal operations ; such as
sensation, motion, respiration, digestion etc. " In my opinion
all these subjects are much less understood than most people
think them." The sects of Physiologists had sought to
explain the functions on totally different principles. " Some
have made the stomach a mill ; some would have it to be a
stewing- pot ; and some a wort-trough : yet all the while, one
would have thought that it must have been very evident,
that the stomach was neither a mill, nor a stewing-pot, nor a
wort-trough, nor anything but a stomach." Mechanical and
chemical visions had taken the place of observations. His
own practice in teaching physiology was to lay before his
students the structure of parts and the known phenomena,
as data ; to state the prevailing opinions, with the chief
arguments on either side ; and then sometimes to give his
own opinion with caution, " but more generally to leave your
* Memorial to the Earl of Bute, appended to Introductory Lectures, p. 120.
* As Physick, the famous pupil of John Hunter, became in 1806 the first Professor of
Surgery proper in the University of Philadelphia, so at an earlier date, William Shippen,
jun., inaugurated the Professorship of Anatomy and Surgery in that Uniyersity in 1765.
Shippen was an enthusiastic pupil of W. Hunter, and an admirable lecturer, forming him-
self after Hunter's model. See Dr. J. Carson's Sistory of the Medical Department of the
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1869; also a letter from Dr. Shippen to W.
Hunter in the Introduction to Dr. Teacner's Catalogue^ p. zxr., footaiote.
52 WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
judgements free, that enquiry and improvement may go on."
He never aimed at displaying his own knowledge, but
laboured to show what the students ought to know. This
excluded all declamation, parade, wrangling, subtlety. Time
and labour were not spared. He lectured for two hours,
from two to four o'clock every day, except Sunday, and the
course lasted nearly four months. He closes with some good
advice to students, about the taking of notes, and their plan
of study and dissection, showing how earnest was his desire,
by teaching openly all he knew, to train them to observe for
themselves, and so to give them no mere cram knowledge,
but that which should be impressed on their minds, by
strong and clear conceptions of things that had been under
the examination of their own senses. The man who so
taught for nearly forty years may have been in truth " the
best teacher of Anatomy that ever lived." ^
It has been already noted ^ that the first lecture of the
course was of a more general character, and that it was open
to the attendance of others besides the students. Horace
Walpole relates an amusing instance of the latitude which the
lecturer sometimes allowed himself. **Dr. Hunter," he
writes, in October 1780, " had the impudence t'other day to
pour out at his Anatomic lecture a more outrageous Smeltiad
than Smelt himself, and imputed all our disgraces and ruin
to the Opposition. Burke was present, and said he had
heard of Political Arithmetic, but never before of Political
Anatomy." ^
Papers relating to Dr. Hunter's intended Plan for
establishing a Museum in London for the Improvement of
Anatomy, Surgery, and Physic, were printed with the
Introductory Lectures. They include, a Memorial to Lord
Bute ; Plan of a Theatre, Museum etc., with an account of
plots of land in Westminster, 1764 ; a memorandum given to
the King by Mr. Hawkins ; and Hunter's final letter to the
Right Honourable George Grenville, ending the matter.
i See page 20. He describes the ingenious construction of his theatre at Windmill Street,
in which the tiers of seats rose circularly around the demonstrating table, which was placed
midway between the centre of the room and its circumference. Introd. Lectures, p. 111.
It would seem from an allusion in his Commentaries (Supplement, p. 20) that he had an
audience of about 100 ; this was in 1756. Hunter's pioneer work, in the first establishment
of complete courses of Anatomical Lectures and dissections in England is acknowledged in
the Report from the Select Committee on Anatomy, 1828, to the House of Commons.
=• See p. 16.
a "Walpole's Letters, Ed. 1857, vii. 456. Walpole in his bantering way calls Hunter " that
Scotch nightman," and says he might teach the youngest Prince his Erse Alphabet, but
other references show that they were on terms of friendship.
PAPERS BEFORE THE ROYAL SOCIETY. 63
This scheme, dear to the Anatomist's heart, has been already
described (see page 11) ; its failure doubtless moved him to
bequeath his own Museum away from London. The
comparative neglect of this Museum, and of John Hunter's,
for a generation or more after the death of the founders,
shows how little their true value was known to the men of
their own day. In later times both Museums have been
highly prized.
William Hunter's papers upon medical and surgical topics
contributed to the "Medical Observations and Inquiries"
have been already noticed (see pages 21 to 23), and a complete
list of them will be found at the end of this chapter.
According to Waldeyer a number of these papers were
translated into German and published at Leipzig soon after
Hunter's death.^
Before the Royal Society Hunter read seven papers. The
first was in 1743 upon Articulating Gartilagea (see page 8).
Twenty-five years elapsed before his next communication, in
1768, entitled, Observations on the bones, commonly
supposed to be Elephant's bones, which have been found near
the river Ohio in America. He discusses the origin of these
fossil bones with the keen interest of a geologist. A short
paper in 1770 gave an Account of some bones found in the
rock of Gibraltar, encrusted with calcareous matter ; and in
the same year he contributed an Account of the NyUghau, an
Indian animal^ not hitherto described. This was illustrated
by a good figure, and a systematic description of the bodily
structure and functions of the animal.
In 1774 or 1775 he read an essay On the Origin of the
Venereal Disease. In this paper he opposed the view of
Astruc that Syphilis was brought into Europe by Columbus
on his first expedition. But the testimony of Peter Martyr
to the previous existence of the disease in Spain did not on
fuller research satisfy his mind, and the paper was never
published.
The last of Hunter's papers before the Royal Society was
read in 1777, and gives A short account of the late Dr. Maty^s
illness. The disease appears to have been Stricture of the
Colon.
A new method of the administration of mercury in
Syphilis by rubbing calomel into the mucous membrane of
> Waldeyer, Biographisches Lexikon der Aerizte, 1886, Art. * W. Hunter/ The papers
were pablished by Kuhn in two yolumes 8yo. in 1784-6 (Dr. Teacher).
54 WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
the lips and mouth, had been devised by Mr. Peter Clare.^
Dr. Hunter wrote in support of it, pointing out the absorp-
tion of substances, especially in a watery medium, from all
mucous surfaces, and deeming that when gradually absorbed
from the surface of the mouth the mercury would be less
irritating to the digestive tract lower down than if swallowed.
Clare speaks in his paper in the warmest terms of Hunter as
his teacher.
Mention may here be made of two pamphlets, in which
Hunter was attacked by a young medical confrere^ Dr.
William Rowley, a man of no high reputation, but of a very
active pen, writing medical treatises for popular reading.
" A letter to Dr. William Hunter, on the dangerous tendency
of medical vanity, occasioned by the death of the late Lady
Holland," appeared in 1774 ; and in the following year, " A
second letter to Dr. William Hunter, being an answer to the
liberal criticism in the Mottthly Review for November, 1774,
... and some account of the new-discovered methods
of curing schirrus breasts without cutting, the cancer, ulcers
of the uterus, the scrophula, ulcers of the legs, and restoring
sight to the blind, by internal medicines only."
The burden of Rowley's complaint was that Hunter had
prevented his attendance on Lady Holland, who had died of
cancer under Hunter's care, and that the latter used hem-
lock^ and opium, drugs which Rowley deemed worthless in
such disorders. Other cases of cancer are related, some of
which, according to Rowley's claim, were cured by his
treatment. Perhaps the chief interest now attaches to a
series of prescriptions which are quoted, with the joint
signatures of Fothergill and Hunter, met in consultation
over one of these cases. Few copies of Rowley's pamphlets
now exist ; perhaps not more than one copy of each in this
country .3 •
> An Essay on the cure of Abscesses hy caustic . . . also a new method of curing
the Lues Venerea^ etc.^ with the remarks of Dr. Hunter ^ etc. 2nd Edition. Lond., 1778.
A third edition appeared next year.
3 The hemlock, then called Cicuta^ was at this time much used, Baron Stdrck having
brought it into repute in 1760 as a cure for cancer and other chronic maJadies. Fotheigill,
Butty and others employed it largely ; Cullen, howeyerj in 1789 gives a very qualmed
account of its value, and its use afterwards became limited to its narcotic apphcations.
From the 1898 British Pharmacopoeia all the preparations of hemlock have gone, excepting
the Succus and the Tincture.
3 A copy of the first is in the Library of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society,
London ; and one of the second is in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Both are in the Library
of the Sur^on-General at Washington, U.S.A., and my thanks are due to Dr. J. C. Merrill,
the Librarian, for his courtesy in sending me a pricis of the second letter. Inquiry has
failed to reveal the existence of any other copies.
ON EMBALMING DEAD BODIES. 55
At the end of a fine copy^ of Hunter's lectures, written
down in manuscript by one of his pupils, is a lecture on
The Art of Embalming dead Bodies, delivered January 13th,
1776. In this he enters in much detail into the subject,
expounds his reasonings and observations upon it, and
describes a process which he had devised and used in
several cases. He relied much on the injection of turpen-
tine compounded with other substances, and subsequently
laying the embalmed body in Plaster of Paris. But the art
was not to be exercised without great labour, so that he
concludes, " considering the trouble you must have during
all these Processes now laid down you ought not to under-
take it under 100 guineas."
Amongst other works which Dr. Hunter had planned, but
did not live to execute, were a systematic account of the
Lymphatic System^, and a treatise on Calculi and Concre-
tions. The former was issued three years after his death by
his partner and assistant, W. Cruikshank, who quotes freely
from the discoveries and work of Hunter. For the latter he
had made a rich collection of specimens, which are in the
Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, together with a set of
twenty-one finely wrought plates, containing 104 figures.
Some of his medical manuscripts are preserved in his
Museum ; amongst them are critical notes of lectures
attended by him when a young man, — those of Ferrein
in Paris in 1743-4, and those of S. Sharpe of Guy's Hospital
in 1746. There is also a diary of his attendance upon
Queen Charlotte commencing in 1762, and including three
confinements.^
Manuscript notes of Hunter's Lectures, taken down by
his pupils, are to be found in several medical libraries. In
London, that of the Royal College of Surgeons is exception-
ally rich in manuscript copies of these lectures, of which a
critical catalogue has been made by Dr. Teacher : some are
of great interest. Other excellent copies are in the Library
of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society, and some in
those of the Royal Colleges of Physicians, both in London
and Edinburgh.
These notes on William Hunter's works may be fitly con-
cluded by a passage from his last written introductory
lecture (p. 92) : — " Every man should be held as a criminal
who locks up his talent, whatever it may be. Mine, from
nature, was small ; but by application and perseverance it
has grown to be considerable."
Boyal Coll. Surg. England. 42. c. S6. " See p. 9, and Dr. J. H. Teacher's Lecture,
LIST OF WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
(A) PUBLISHED WORKS.
I. Medical CommentarieB. Part 1. Containing a plain
and direct answer to Prof. Monro, jun., inter-
spersed with Remarks on the Structure, Functions,
and Diseases of several parts of the Human Body.
London, 1762. (Four fine plates by Riemsdyk.
113 pp. 4to., including an Appendix).
II. A Supplement to the First Part of the Medical
Commentaries. London, 1764. (33 pp. 4to.)
III. The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus exhibited
in figures. Birmingham, John Baskerville, 1774.
(34 Plates, some of them 23 by 17 inches, the
figures mostly of life size, with Preface and
descriptions in Latin and English, in parallel
columns : the Latin version of the Preface was
corrected by Sir George Baker, Bart. Large
Folio. Price at issue, six guineas.)
IV. Reflections on dividing the Symphysis of the Ossa
Pubis. (Published as a Supplement to the 2nd
Edition of Dr. J. Vaughan's " Cases and Observa-
tions on the Hydrophobia, etc., London." Preface
dated 1778).
V. Two Introductory Lectures, delivered by Dr.
William Hunter, to his last course of Anatomical
Lectures, at his Theatre in Windmill Street: as
they were left corrected for the Press by himself.
'. /T. , I f»
P«-0 ALTO, CALIfORf^yi
LIST OF WILLIAM UUNTER'S WORKS. 67
To which are added some Papers relating to Dr.
Hunter's intended Plan for establishing a Museum
in London, for the improvement of Anatomy,
Surgery, and Physic. Printed by Order of the
Trustees, London, 1784. (130 pp. 4to.)
VI. An Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid
Uterus, and its contents. London 1794. (88 pp.
4to. Edited by Baillie, who supplied the latter
pages in completion of the work).
(See also. Remarks on the administration of mercury,
appended to Mr. Clare's Essay, noticed on a
former page.)
(B) PAPERS READ BEFORE THE ROYAL SOCIETY.
See Philosophical Transactions^ volumes 42nd to 69th.
I. On the Structure and Diseases of Articulating
Cartilages. 1743
II. Observations on the bones, commonly sup-
posed to be Elephants' bones, which have
been found near the river Ohio in America. 1768
III. Account of some bones found in the rock of
Gibraltar. 1770
IV. An Account of the Nyl-ghau, an Indian
animal, not hitherto described. 1770
V. Account of the fusing of a Bell-wire by
Lightning. (Not published^. 1772
VI. On the Origin of the Venereal Disease.
(Not published). 1774 or 1775
VII. A short account of the late Dr. Maty's illness.
(In conjunction with Mr. H. Watson). 1777
Besides these papers Hunter communicated a paper
by Hewson, at that time working in his dis-
secting room, on the Lymphatic System in
Birds, in which Hunter's own discoveries are
referred to. 1768
> The MS. of this f hort paper is in Hunter's Museum (Teacher).
58
LIST OF WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS.
Also Dr. Fordyce and Mr. Alchorne reported " An
Examination of various Ores in the Museum
of Dr. William Hunter."
1779
(C) PAPERS READ BEFORE THE "MEDICAL
SOCIETY OF PHYSICIANS,"
and published in its Medical Observations and
Inquiries, (Six volumes, 1757 to 1784.)
I.
IL
III.
The History of an Aneurysm of the Aorta,
with some remarks on Aneurysms in
general. (2 large plates.) (Vol. i., p. 323.)
The History of an Emphysema, followed
by Remarks on the Cellular membrane
and some of its diseases. (A long and
very instructive paper.) (Vol. ii., p. 17.)
Account of a diseased Tibia as a Supple-
ment to the last article, (t.e., to Dr.
Mackenzie's account of separation of
part of the thigh bone.) (2 plates.)
(Vol. ii., p. 303.)
Remarks on the Symphysis of the Ossa
Pubis. (Vol. ii., p. 333.)
Further observations upon a particular
species of Aneurysm. (Arterio- venous
Aneurysm was now first described.)
(Vol. ii., p. 390.)
Introduction to Mr. Teckel's paper on the
Insensibility of Tendons. (Vol. iv., p.
343.)
Postscript to Mr. Armiger's letter on the
Varicose Aneurysm. (Vol. iv., p. 385.)
VIII. Appendix to Mr. John Lynn's ''History of
a fatal Inversion (Retroversion) of the
(gravid) Uterus." (Vol. iv., p. 400.)
Summary Remarks on the Retroverted
Uterus. (Vol. v., p. 388.)
IV.
V.
VI.
VII.
IX.
1757(?)
1757
1761
1761
1761
1770
1770(?)
1770(?)
1775(?)
LIST OF WILLIAM HUNTER'S WORKS. 59
X. On the Uncertainty of the Signs of Murder,
in the Case of Bastard Children. (Long
and admirably reasoned ; this paper
was published in 1818 in a separate
form.) (Vol. vi., p. 266.) 1783
XI. Three cases of Mal-conformation in the
Heart. (With remarks containing some
of the essentials of the doctrine of evolu-
tion.) (VoL vi., p. 291.) 1783
XII. The successful Cure of a severe Disorder
of the Stomach by Milk taken in small
Quantities at once. (With a letter from
Mr. Wm. Hey, as an appendix, relating
four additional cases.) (Vol. vi., p. 310.) 1783
(The three latter papers, upon which alone the reputation of a medical
philosopher and clinician might well be established, were not read before the
Society until after the author's death. Various other papers by surgeons and
country physicians were communicated to the Society by W. Hunter.
Mention may here also be made of a letter from Dr. A. Hunter, of Tork, to
Dr. W. Hunter, giving an account of the cure of a case of severe hydrocephalus
by repeated vapour-baths ; see Med. Comment. (Duncan), viii., p. 106. Mr. R.
lUkyley, a surgeon, published at New York, about 1781, a series of cases of
Angina Trachealis, in a letter to W. Hunter. Lastly, Dr. Anthony Fothergill
read before the Medical Society of London in 1786, an account of a case of
enlarged Prostate Gland, and quoted a short but excellent letter from Dr.
Hunter on the subject, written about 1777 ; see Memoirs of the Med. Soc.
Lond.j vol. i., p. 204.)
(D) OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS AND MANUSCRIPT WORKS.
Letters and Controversial Papers in the Critical Review.
Lectures on Anatomy, Physiology, Surgery, Midwifery, the
Art of Embalming, etc., in the manascript notes of students,
preserved in various libraries.
BIOGRAPHY.
Within a few months of Dr. Hunter's death in 1783, an
Account of his life was ably and judiciously drawn up by
Dr. Samuel Foart Simmons,^ from full information supplied
by Matthew Baillie, John Hunter and other friends. It
was read before the Medical Society of Physicians, of which
Hunter was, at the time of his death, President, and forms
a small book of some seventy pages. All later notices of
William Hunter have been based chiefly upon this work.*
His niece Agnes Baillie left a short record of the family
Pedigree and traditions concerning her famous uncles, which
is preserved among the Hunter- Baillie manuscripts, together
with Reminiscences of William Hunter, compiled by Dr.
Matthew Baillie's only daughter, Mrs. Milligan.
There are good articles under Hunter's name in many of
the Encyclopaedias, in the National Dictionary of Bio-
graphy^ Dr. Munk's Holl of the Royal College of Physicians,
Dr. Pettigrew's Medical Portrait Gallery, and the Lives of
British Physicians (by Dr. Macmichael) ; see also The
Gold-headed Gane by the same author, and Bettany's
Eminent Doctors, Sir Benjamin C. Brodie delivered the
Hunterian Oration on William Hunter in 1837, and Dr.
Matthews Duncan's Earveian Address in 1876 (see Edin-
burgh Medical Journal, June, 1876), gives a most appre-
ciative account of his medical character. Dr. Duncan's
Researches in Obstetrics, 1868, are also full of allusion to
W. Hunter. Accounts of his life and work are likewise to
be found in some of the medical periodicals in the course
> Dr. Simmons (1750—1813) was physician to St. Luke's Hospital and F.B..S. He
edited for many years the London Medical Journal^ etc.
' The account of his life in Dr. Andrew Duncan's Medical Commentaries^ Vol. viii.,
p. 426, published in Edinburgh, 1783, seems to have been founded on Simmons.
BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM HUNTER. 61
of the nineteenth century. Thus Dr. Robert Lee chose this
theme for a discourse to the students of St. George's Hos-
pital in 1844.^ An excellent pictorial series of articles, with
a critical estimate of Hunter's position as a leader in British
Medicine, was contributed to the Medical IHmes and Gazette
in 1859,^ and a like series by J. Burgess appeared in the
Medical Circular next year.^ Sketches of his life, each
illustrated with a portrait, were contained in the Asclepiad
in 1888, and in the Practitioner in 1899. The late Dr.
Mather's life of W. Hunter, in Tivo Great Scotsmen^ is
almost entirely a compilation from Duncan and Simmons,
accompanied with two good portraits. Dr. John H. Teacher
has prefaced his Gatalogue of the Anatomical and Patho-
logical Preparations in William Hunter's Museum, pub-
lished in 1900, by an elegant portrait and Introduction^
containing a sympathetic account of Hunter's life, with a
critical examination of his opinions and discoveries. A
lecture by the same author, contributed to the Glasgow
Medical Journal (July, 1899), includes some further
material.
A valuable series of William Hunter's letters is printed in
Thomson's Life of Gullen^ and both in that work and in
Glaister's Dr. William Smellie and his Contemporaries^
there is much information concerning Hunter. Several of
Baillie's works contain important allusions to his uncle ;
and the memoirs of John Hunter by Everard Home, by
Foot, by Adams, by Ottley, and especially the most recent,
by Stephen Paget {Masters of Medicine Series), should be
consulted. Other authorities have been cited in the text.^
The author would here express his acknowledgments to
those who have kindly rendered him assistance in preparing
this work. And firstly to the Council of the Royal College
of Surgeons, for permission to use the Hunter-Baillie manu-
scripts, and the author would gladly have coupled with this
the name of Mr. J. B. Bailey, B.A., the late Librarian, whose
interest in the Hunters was well known. Miss Hunter-
Baillie's kindness in giving free access to documents
remaining in her own hands deserves warm recognition :
well were it if all the family records of the great found
> London Medical Oazette^ new series, vol. i., p. 1.
« Vol. xviii., pp. 891, 453, 602.
» Vol. xvi, pp. 176, etc.
* I have not seen the article, Ouglielmo Hunter e la sua seuola in the Oazz, Med. Jtal,
Lomb.f MllanOj 1849,
&2 BIOGRAPHY OF WILLIAM HUNTER.
such worthy and public-spirited custodians. To the learned
Curator of the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, Professor John
Young, M.D., are due hearty thanks, as well as to the Under
Keepers, Mr. John Young, LL.D. and Dr. John H. Teacher,
for many references. Amongst others who have kindly
afforded advice or information should be mentioned Mrs.
W. Hunter, late of Rothesay, the late Sir James Paget and
the late Dr. William Munk.
miUlam Dunter.
PORTRAITS OF WILLIAM HUNTER.
William Hunter's portraits are numerous. The principal
are by Reynolds, Chamberlen, and Pine. Those by Pine,
which are unfortunately the most widely known, are
unlike the rest, and exhibit a face of regular features,
almost free from lines, and showing little of special
character or intelligence. They may belong to an earlier
period of life than the others, but the present writer, who
has examined nearly all the known examples of William
Hunter's portraits in Great Britain, thinks that Pine must
have failed to present Hunter's usual aspect. This, as shown
by the other portraits and especially by the print preferred
by his biographer Simmons, displays a countenance of deli-
cate features, lit up with intelligence and slightly smiling ;
— the nose aquiline, with deep naso-labial farrows, and a
prominent pointed chin. Native shrewdness, a love of
precision, and a polished and engaging address, are sug-
gested by the physiognomy. A cast of his head, taken after
death, and now in the Museum, exhibits the same strongly
marked features, together with a forehead sloping back to a
rounded head of full average size. It may be added that
Hunter was a man of slender build, and rather below the
middle stature, but there is no reason to think that he was
so little as his brother John, who was only five feet two
inches in height.
The following is a list of the portraits so far as they are
known : —
(I.) Sir Joshua Reynolds painted William, as he painted
John Hunter, and although the result bears little com-
parison with the masterpiece which adorns the Council
Room of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, it is a
very fine portrait. Two examples are known, one doubtless
64 PORTRAITS OF WILLIAM HUNTER.
the replica of the other, and both are in Glasgow ; displayed
in the Hunterian Museum, and in the Hall of the Faculty
of Physicians and Surgeons, in that city.^ Hunter is
standing at a table, upon which are specimens of the Retro-
verted Gravid Uterus.^ A print taken from Freeman's
engraving of this portrait forms the frontispiece of the
present work.
(2.) A large portrait by Mason Chamberlen, R.A., hangs in
the Diploma Gallery of the Royal Academy, London. The
figure is seated and full-faced.^ CoUyer's medallion print,
after this portrait or a similar one, was preferred by Dr.
Simmons (1783), as the best of Hunter's portraits ; '* it
exhibits," he says, " an accurate and striking resemblance of
his features.^' A reproduction will be found at page 63.
Hunter is holding up a small model of a skeleton to demon-
strate the muscles.
(3.) The best known of Hunter's portraits hangs in the
entry-hall of the Royal College of Surgeons of England. It
is the work of Pine, and represents the doctor seated at a
table, as if in thought, leaning his head on his left hand,
the elbow resting on a large book spread open. He wears
an ample wig, and the aspect is somewhat feminine. This
forms one of a series of portraits of the Hunter family
which was presented to the College, with the Hunter-
Baillie Manuscripts, by the executors of the late W. Hunter-
Baillie in 1895.^
(4.) Another portrait by Pine is in the Hunterian Museum,
Glasgow. It differs slightly in posture from the last ;
Hunter holds a paper before him at the table, and looks
away in thought, the face is less feminine, and the coat is
highly embroidered.*
(5.) By J. Zoffani, R.A., in the Library of the Royal
College of Physicians, London, presented by Mr. Bransby
»- ' '■ .
^ The latter portrait is the property of Mrs. William Hunter, late of Bothesay (see
footnote, page 3), and is lent by her to the Faculty.
' See page 35, and Professor Young's Catalogue of Pictures, Sculptures^ and other
works of Art in the University of Glasgow. The portrait has been reproduced by AnTift ii
for Dr. Mather's Two Great Scotsmen.
3 The central part of this portrait was well engraved by Haughton in Cadell's series.
There is also a French print.
* The portrait was engraved by Thomson for Pettigrew's Medical Portrait Gallery^ and
a print executed by Annan for Dr. Mather's work ; other prints art in the Asclepiad, 1888,
and the Practitioner, 1899.
» A good print by Annan of this portrait forms the frontispiece to Dr. Teacher's
Catalogue (see p. 40.)
POKTRAITS OF WILLIAM HUNTER. 06
B. Cooper. Hunter stands lecturing from a paper held up
before him, the head turned to face the spectator.
(6.) By the same, in the Council Room of the Royal
College of Surgeons. Hunter is demonstrating at a table,
upon which are preparations and an inkstand.
(7.) A picture, also by Zoffani, but unfinished in part,
hangs on the staircase of the College of Physicians. It
formerly belonged to Dr. Matthew Baillie. Hunter is shown
lecturing before the Royal Academy.^
(8.) Miss Hunter-Baillie possesses a portrait, the artist
unknown, but evidently drawn when Hunter was old. It
is a full-face figure with white frill and wide collar to the
coat.
In the same safe keeping are three fine miniatures. Two
are identical, and show the doctor apparently in court dress,
a blue coat with gold stripes. The third is an exquisite
portrait of Hunter in his old age, attired in a pale grey coat,
and holding a skull in his hand. The face is drawn with
delicacy and softness. Another fine miniature, known to be
the work of Cosway, is in the possession of Dr. Henry
Gervis. There is also a medallion in the Hunterian Museum,
Glasgow, which is reproduced opposite page 1. A portrait
medal has been struck in Hunter's honour, and is figured
by Dr. Mather.^
^ See pa^ 9, and footnote. There is, I believe, a photograph of this picture at the
South Kensington Museum.
> There are also a ^ood many prints existing. One of the best was engraved by
Thomthwaite in 1780 ; it represents Hunter lecturing, his elbows on the table, and a pa^
of spectacles in one hand ; & femur lies beside him. There are too, a small vignette by W.
Read ; medallion prints, by Dawe, 1780 ; Hedees, 1781 ; and Parry, 1784 ; others issued by
the European Magazine ^ " from a model in the possession of Mr. Pingo of the Tower : "
the Universal Magazine (Camberledge), both in 1783 ; besides a portrait published in the
same year by J. "Walker, and one in 1 786 by Dieterich at Gottingen. A large medallion
portrait adorned the certificates granted at the Great "Windmill Street School of Anatomy.
There is also a very singular black and white silhouette (8vo.) of Hunter writing by
lamplight in his study, a little man with a big head ; a few sx>ecimens and books are
aroimd him, else the room is bare (see page 48). Most of these engraved portraits are to be
seen in the large collections belonging to the Boyal College of Surgeons, and the Royal
Medical and Chirurgical Society in London, as well as in the Tan Kaathoven collection of
medical portraits, now in the Surgeon Qeneral's Library at Washington, "CT.S.A.
LONG CALDERWOOD.
BIRTHPLACE OF THE HUNTERS.
The cottage farmhonBe purchased by John Hanter, senior,
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and then styled
" Calderfield," is yet standing and little changed. It is in
the parish of East Kilbride, Lanarkshire, and about seven
miles south-east of Glasgow. Here dwelt the said John
Hunter and his wife Agnes Paul, and here were born their
large family, of whom so many died young of congiiniption,
but out of whom survived William Hunter, Dorothea
Baillie, and John Hunter. [See page 2], The farm is
chiefly pasture, and was cut short in its borders by the
first John Hunter, who had to sell field after field to supply
the needs of his many children. William Hnnter, though
he visited the old home but once after he went south,
restored the bounds of the family estate, buying up the
fields around as they came into the market. He left the
farm to Matthew BaiLlie, who honourably gave it up to
John Hunter, and after the death without issue of the
latter's son. Captain John Banks Hunter, and of his sister.
Lady (Agnes) Campbell, it came into the possession of the
son of Dr. Baillie, William Hnnter- Baillie, as next of kin.
The present proprietress. Miss Hunter- Baillie, daughter of
the last named, has kindly given the writer some impres-
sions of a visit to her property.
The farm-house is a simple building of two stories,
surrounded by trees ; the front garden is entered between
low pointed atone piers, and a short straight path leads to ~
the small porch before the door. The upstairs room on the,
left, over the kitchen, is pointed out as that in which the
Hunters were born. A large arched bed-recess nearly
occupies one side of the room, and still contains an old
wooden bedstead ; by its side is a cupboard with a window.
Dr. Mather's memoir touches on the local features, — the
upland pastnrea and the quiet Scottish scenery, amidst
which two great men received the training of their
boyhood.'
r at Long Galdenriwi is Ukeu trom ■ photograph klodlf Iw
DR. JOHN F0THERGILL.1
Two letters from Dr. Fothergill to Dr. Hunter are
preserved in the Hunter-Baillie Manuscripts. The first is
as follows :
"Dr Doctor,
"I am greatly obliged by thy kind discreet and
effectually] application to Lord H. I am not less so to
that worthy nobleman, for the part he takes in this affair.
It may perhaps never be in my power to make proper
acknowledgements to either of you, for even the inclination
of serving me.
" I have directed the proper inquirys to be made, respecting
Dr. Saunders^s connections, and will send them, the moment
they come to hand.
" Be kind enough to favour me with a list of the Governors ;
and if there are any amongst them to whom I can apply, I
will do it with pleasure ; it is my duty and I am sure it is
my wish to deserve Dr. Hunter's friendship.
" It may perhaps be proper to acquaint Dr. de mainbray,
that the corrals are just as they came out of the sea. They
may easily be cleaned, by putting them in warm water just
acidulated with spirit of sea salt, and then again washing
them in fresh warm water. When dry they may be fixed
on small suitable pedestals ; and either put up in a glass
case to secure them from dust ; or placed upon and down
the mus8Bum coverd with glass bells. Some are reserved
for Dr. Hunter's musseum, when it is ready to receive them.
At present they may lye where they are, as safely, as amidst
a thousand Hobgoblins, nightly searching for their scattered
remains.
^ S«epageS5.
68 JOHN FOTHERGILL.
"Pray D.r Doctor would it be practicable for Lord H. to
dismias me with any decency from the stage. I am brought
there to say nothing but what is proper, but to say it and
appear in a ridiculous manner. Is not this as great an
insult upon me, and even upon any character that is
opposite to vice and folly, as can be offerd I Buffoonery
should only be let loose to prey on these ; not to render
their opposites in any degree contemptible. If thro'
weakness or indiscretion I slide into mistakes, I bear most
patiently the just chastisement, whether publick or private.
But in this instance I am doubly hurt. I am held up to
the whole town to laugh at, and the people with whom I am
connected likewise. Nor does the faculty in general derive
much benefit from the contempt thrown on an individual,
tho' individuals of the faculty may rejoice at it.
**I am Dr. Hunter's, obliged, respectfull
"J. FOTHBRGILL.
"11th Inst."
The date is without month or year. Dr. Fothergill died
in December, 1780. Hunter's connection with the court
began in 1762. "Lord H.," who was evidently Lord
Chamberlain, can only be the Earl of Hertford, who filled
that office from 1766 to 1782. Hunter, as the Queen's physi-
cian, probably met him often ; and a portrait of Lady
Hertford, who died a year before Hunter, is in the latter's
Museum, together with a letter from Queen Charlotte asking
for a copy of it.
The purpose of Fothergill's application to the Lord
Chamberlain is not stated. It was most likely of a
benevolent nature. Fothergill was no man of courts, and
sought little for himself. When he approached the sovereign
or those in authority it was to plead the cause of peace, of
true religion, or of the sufferings of the oppressed. Thus in
the course of the year 1769 he was engaged with other
Friends in drawing up a letter of advice to members in
America, in addressing Governor Eden on his departure for
Maryland, and in using his influence to defend three
Yorkshire Friends who were excommunicated by the
Archdeacon's Court at Beverley for non-payment of " Clerk's
wages " of eight pence per year to their parish clerk.^
^ MS. Minutes ofth§ Meeting for SufferinpSf Society of Friends, London, 1769.
LETTERS TO WILLIAM HUNTER. 69
. The Dr. Saunders mentioned is almost certainly the well-
known Dr. William Saunders, F.R.S. (1743-1817), who wrote
on Mineral Waters and on various means of treatment. He
was a Scotsman and a friend of Cullen, and settled in London
about 1765, when he would be very likely to bring a
recommendation to William Hunter. He was elected
Physician to Guy's Hospital 6th May, 1770. If this letter
refers to his application for that post it would probably be
written in 1768 or 1769.
Dr. Demainbray (1710-1782), to whom Fothergill had been
sending corals, was an Electrician and Astronomer of repute :
he discovered the influence of electricity in stimulating the
growth of plants. He was tutor to the Prince of Wales until
he came to the throne in 1760, and after that date to the
young Queen, so that Hunter would naturally meet him. In
1768 he was made Astronomer at Kew : it is more likely he
would be forming a ** Museum" after he had settled at Kew
than before, so that the date 1769 would fit well.
Dr Hunter's own Museum is spoken of as not yet ready to
receive specimens. In 1769 he was building his house in
Great Windmill Street, and fitting up one magnificent room
to contain his collections.
The introduction of the Society of Friends, and of Dr.
Fothergill's person in particular, into a play upon the stage
seems, from the last paragraph in the letter, to have justly
moved the doctor's indignation, which he expresses in his
habitual modest and restrained manner of speech. The
severe dress, sedate manner, and strict *tutoyer' of the
Quaker, popular physician as he was, must have been a
frequent butt for humour in his day. Did Hunter succeed,
for we may be sure he tried, in inducing the Lord Chamber-
lain to put an end to this stage ribaldry ? ^
The second letter is short, and runs thus :
"Lea Hall. 23rd inst.
'* Dear Doctor,
" I am yet alive, tho' not quite well. I found
myself much reduced, when I got to this place, but have
been very quiet, and begin to recover some little strength
and spirits. Be kind enough to deliver the inclosed, &
introduce me as favourably as possible. It is enough to have
1 Dibdin'8 plav, The Quaker^ was brought out about 1778. There may hare been a
precursor, oontaining aome allusion to Dr. Fothergill, which is not apparent in The Quaker %
though it might easily be supplied in the acting.
70 JOHN FOTHERGILL.
one Anatomist inspecting one's pericranium, but to be under
the hands of two such, especially, if the aestus [?] of
dissecting bites, is terrible to think of. We have had cool,
and not unseasonable weather. I have been followed by
many letters, and have wrote much. But I have been free
from much company. This evening half my holidays is
past. But I will forget this, and think only of returning to
my Friends in health, & a disposition to rejoice in their
happiness.
" Farewel my Friend, & believe me to be very cordially
thy admirer. " J. FOTHBRGILL."
The letter is dated from Lea Hall, about four miles from
Crewe, in Cheshire, a country house to which Fothergill
regularly retired to spend the autumn months in the last
sixteen years of his life. His health failed from the
continuous pressure of work in London during his later
years. This letter may well have been written in 1772, as
its expressions accord with a letter of that year quoted by
Lettsom in his Account of Fothergill.
The enclosure to be delivered by Hunter to some one, and
favourably introduced, would seem to have been in response
to a request which came through the latter. Perhaps it was
John Hunter or Cruikshank who desired the measurements
of Fothergill's head for some investigation akin to what
was afterwards known as phrenology.^ The picture is a
pleasing one of the old physician, in his country retreat,
followed even there by many letters, and though his strength
is nearly spent, placid in spirit and playful in humour,
thinking ever of others and of their happiness.
Fothergill's medical writings deal with clinical topics.
His classical treatise on Putrid Sore- throat passed through
five editions between 1748 and 1769.^ Another paper *' of the
management proper at the cessation of the Menses" was
highly thought of, and has been translated into French ; it
was republished by the Sydenham Society in 1849.*
^ Gall, the founder of phrenology, was bom in 1758.
' A copj of the first two editions bound together, with marginal pencil notes in Fothergill's
handwriting, and an autograph letter from Dr. Cantwell, has been handed down through
Fothergill's niece Alice Chorley, Thomas Thompson, Thomas Hancock, M.D., Thomas Bevan,
M.D., and T. B. Peacock, M.1)., by the last of whom it was presented to the Boyal Medical
and Ghirurgical Society in London.
* As Fothergill's dispute with Dr. Leeds, who claimed £500 from him, is alluded to in the
National Dictionary of Biography^ and in 2%e Georgian Era (rol. ii., p. 327), where he is
sererely blamed, it may be mentioned here that an examination of Dr. Leeds' Appeal (1773)
is sufficient, without hearing Fothergill's side, to oonyince the reader of the justice of the
latter' s position.
THE FOTHERGILLIAN MEDAL. 71
The Fothergill family can be traced back for three or four
centuries in the secluded vales of Westmoreland. John
Fothergill's branch moved thence into Wensleydale about
1600. From Sedbergh came Dr. Anthony Fothergill, who
died in 1813, aged 78 years : an able physician, and much
befriended by his elder namesake, whom indeed, on his
death in 1780, he tried to follow in practice in London ; but
failing there he went to Bath, where he acquired large
business. Anthony Fothergill was an active Fellow of the
Medical Society of London, and made many contributions
to its transactions : he gave the sum of £500 to its funds.
John Milner Fothergill, M.D. (1841-1888), came also from
Westmoreland. He won the Fothergill ian medal in 1878
by his essay on the "Antagonistic Action of Therapeutic
Agents."
John Fothergill's name is preserved in connection with
the Medical Society of London, to which, however, he never
belonged, his support having been given to the older
"Medical Society of Physicians."^ Lettsom founded and
endowed in 1784 a gold medal in commemoration of Dr.
John Fothergill, to be given annually by the Medical Society
of London. This Fothergillian medal is now awarded
triennially to the author of the best work on some branch
of Practical Medicine or Practical Surgery. " FothergilliuSy
Medicus, Amicus^ Homo^^ was to have been the legend
around the bust of Fothergill upon the obverse of the medal,
but it was altered to, " Medicus Egregius, Amicis GaruSy
Omnium Amicus.^^^
Fothergill was, I believe, never painted from the life, but
there are portraits in the possession of the London College
of Physicians (by Hogarth), and of the Medical Society. A
very beautiful Wedgwood bust in black ware is also in
existence, as well as Cameo portraits and numerous en-
gravings.
^ See Mr. Edmund Owen's Oration, Trans. Med. Soc. Lond., xx., 309. See also Antea^
p. 21.
> The following lines on Fothergill were not improbably composed by Lettsom : —
Cm suas artes, sua dona laetus
Et herham et Venae salientia ictum
Scire concessit^ celerem et medendi
Delius usum.
See Fothergill's Works^ by Lettsom, 1783, back of title page; also inscribed under
Bartolozzi's portrait of F. in Nichols' Literary Anecdotes,
ADDENDA.
DOROTHEA BAILLIB.
(Seepage 3.)
Dorothea Baillie, sister to W. and J. Hunter, lived to the
age of 86 years : her two daughters, Agnes to 99 years and
7 months, and Joanna to 88 years and 5 months respectively.
See a memorial tablet in Hampstead Parish Church.
MEMBERSHIP OF THE CORPORATION OF SURGEONS.
(Seepage 7).
W. Hunter's membership of the Corporation of Surgeons
was annulled at his request in 1756, but it does not appear
that he paid the appointed fee of 40 guineas for the disfran-
chisement, as in 1758 he paid a fine of £20, the penalty
incurred for joining the College of Physicians without the
consent of the Court of Assistants.^
FUNERAL OF W. HUNTER.
(Seepage 15),
"On Saturday, at eight o'clock in the evening, his re-
mains were interred in the vault under St. James' Church
[Piccadilly], attended by his nephew (Mr. Baillie) as chief
mourner, Dr. Pitcairne, Sir Geo. Baker, Dr. Fordyce, Dr.
Heberden, Mr. Cruikshank, Mr. Coombe, Mr. Birmice (his
draughtsman), and a few other friends." ^
^' Cold is that hand, which Nature's paths displayed ;
Dead are those lips on which instruction hung ;
Fix'd are those eyes, enlivening all he said ;
For ever mute is that persuasive tongue ! " ^
^ South, Memorials of the Craft of Surgery in England^ p. 283.
' Oentleman^s Magazine^ 1788, p. 866.
3 Lines on W. Hunter, quoted by Wadd, Nugae Chirurgicae^ 1824, p. 230.
INDEX
Abernethy, 34
Ack worth School, 25
Akenside, 48
Albinus, 6, 7, 50
Alchorne, 58
Anatomy, School of , 20
Aneurysm, 21, 58
Aristotle, 49
Armiger, 58
Babington, B. G., 20
Bacon, 17
Bailey, J. B., 61
Baillie, Hev. James, 26
Baillie, Mrs. Dorothea, 3, 39, 66, 72
Baillie, Matthew, passim
Baillie, Agnes, 3, 60, 72
Baillie, Joanna, 3, 12, 72
Baillie, W. Hunter-, 3, 11,64, 66
Baillie, Miss Hunter-. 61, 65, 66
Baker, Sir George, 20 footnote,
56, 72
Banks, Sir Joseph, 33
Baskerville, 18
Baudelocque, 30
Bayley, R., 59
Bell, Sir Charles, 20 footnote, 34
Bergman, 14
Birmice, 72
Black, Joseph, 33
Blizard, Thomas, 2
Blizard, Sir William, 2
Blundell, 43
Boerhaave, 6, 19,28
Brodie, Sir B. C, 20, 21, 28, 60
Brown, Dr. John, 33 footnote
Burgess, J., 61
Burke, 52
Bute, Earl of, 51 footnote, 52
Caldani, 19, 42
Calculi, 55
Campbell, Lady Agnes, 66
Carlisle, Sir A., 34
Cavendish, 33
Cellular tissue, 22
Chamberlen, Mason, 63, 64
Chamberlens, 30
Cheselden, William, 6, 7
Cicero, 50
Clare, Peter, 54, 57
Clephane, 31
Clift, W., 34, 43
Cline, 34
Coin collection, 37
Colly er, 64
Combe, Charles, 15, 37, 38, 39,
40,72
Cook, Captain, 36
Cooper, Sir Astley, 34, 42
Cooper, Bransby B., 65
Cosway, 65
Critical Review, The, 59
Cruikshank, W., 8, 12, 20, 27,
39 50 55 72
Cullen, William, 4, 10, 16, 23, 24,
30, 32, 33, 35, 47, 49, 54 foot-
note, 61,69
Cummin, William, 46
Da Costa, 49
Dalton, 33
Darwin, Charles, ^6
Darwin, Erasmus, 33
Darwinian Theory, 23
Davy, Sir Humphry, 21, 33
Decidua, 18
De Graaf, 46
De Mainbray, 67, 69
6
74
INDEX.
Denman, Dr. 47
Diphtheria, 25
Douglas, James, 4, 50
Drury, Dru, 49
Duncan, Matthews, 18, 19, 31,
35, 60
Else, 2
Embahning, The Art of, 55
Emphysema, Traumatic, 22
Evolution, 23
Faraday, 33
Farr, S., 23, 46
Faselius, 46
Ferrein, 55
Fontenelle, 50
Foot, Jesse, 45
Forceps, Midwifery, 30, 44
Fordyce, George, 39, 40, 58, 72
Fothergill, Anthony, 59, 71
Fothergill, John, 21, 23, 25, 26,
49, 54, 67
Fothergill, J. M., 71
Fothergillian Medal, 71
Franklin, Benjamin, 8, 25, 33
Friends, Society of, 25, 68, 69
Funeral of W. Hunter, 72
Galen, 49
Galvani, 33
Gaubius, 28, 29
Gervis, Dr. Henry, 65
Gibbon, 9
Glaister, Dr., 30, 31 footnote, 61
Gooch, 46
Gregoire, 30
Gross, Prof., 21
Halford, Sir H., 34
Haller, 6, 14, 17, 47
Hamilton, Sir W., 24
Harvey, 27, 50
Hawkins, Caesar, 20
Heart Disease, Congenital, 22
Heberden, 72
Hemlock, 54
Herschell, 33
Hertford, Earl of, 68
Hewson, 8, 12, 48, 50, 57
Hey, William, 59
Hippocrates, 17, 34
Hogben, 42
Holland, Lady, 54
Horrocks, Dr. P., 45
Hume, David, 9, 49
Hunter, John, Sen., 3, 66
Hunter, William, ^a««twi
Hunter, John, passim
Hunter, James, 16
Hunter, Capt. John Banks, 66
Hunter, William, of Largs, 3
footnote
Hunter, William, of Rothesay, 3
footnote
Hunter, Mrs. W., 62, 64 footnote
Hunter, Dr. A., 59
Huxham, 5, 6
Infanticide, 23
Jenner, E., 34
Laskey, Capt., 40
Lavoisier, 33
Lee, Robert, 43, 45, 61
Leeds, Dr., 70 footnote
Leopold, 45
Lettsom, 70, 71 footnote
Loder, 42
Long Calderwood, 66
Lynn, John, 58
Macartney, 34
Macdonald, George, M.A., 38
Maddocks, Jas., 2
Man-Midwifery, 29
Manningham, Sir R., 29
Martin, Dr. Thos., 37
Mather, Dr., 61, 65, 66
Maty, 53, 57
Maubray, 29
Mayo, Herbert, 20
Mead, 5, 6, 27, 37
Milligan, Mrs., 60
Monro, Alexander and successors,
4, 12, 17, 48, 56
Morbid Anatomy,Baillie on, 27, 29
Morison, Dr. A., 43 footnote
Morgagni, 6, 14, 28
Munk, W., 62
Museum, W. Hunter's, 11, 19,
26, 27, 35, 52, 63, 67, 69
INDEX.
76
NiOHOLLS, 6
Nihell, Mrs., 29
Nourse, 2
Nyl-Ghau, 53, 57
Orignal, Lord Orford's, 9
Osborn, 44 footnote, 45
Ovariotomy, 43
Owen, Sir R., 45
Paget, Sir J., 62
Paget, Stephen, 61
Parry, Dr., 18 footnote
Pathological Society, 28
Physick, 34, 51 footnote
Physiologists, 51
Pine, 63, 64
Pitcairn, D., 39, 40, 49, 72
Pitcairn, William, 39
Placenta, 13, 17, 18, 45
Pott, Percival, 6, 7, 43, 48
Priestly, 33
Quaker, The, 69 footnote
Queen Charlotte, 26, 49, 55, 68,69
Radcliffe, 5, 15
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 9, 35, 63
Rigby, E., 43
Rowley, W., 54
Rum ford, 33
Ruysch, 6, 14
Rymsdyk, 18, 42
Saunders, W., 2, 67, 69
Sharpe, Samuel, 2, 55
Shelburne, Lord, 12
Shippen, William, 51 ootnote
Sigaultean Operation, 44
Simmons, S. F., 60, 63, 64
Smellie, William, 4, 19, 29, 30,
31, 47, 61
Smelt, 52
Smollett, 45, 48
Soemmering, 28, 42
Sografi, 47 footnote
Sore Throat, Putrid, 25
Southgate, Rev. R., 38
Stevenson, Jas., 38
Suffolk, Earl of, 10
Sutton, H. G., 50 footnote
Sydenham, 5, 15, 27
Symphysiotomy, 44, 45
Taylor, Tom, 8 footnote
Teacher, Dr. J. H., 18,40,55,61,62
Teckel, 58
Thornthwaite, 65 footnote
Tofts, Mary, 29
Tyson, Rev. M.,39
Uterus,Human Gravid, 18,42,56
Van Butch ell, Mrs., 20f ootnote
Vaughan, Dr. J., 56
Vicq d'Azyr, 14
Vinci, Leonardo da, 50
Volta, 33
Walpole, Horace, 9, 52
Watson, Sir Thomas, 23
Watt, 13, 33
Wollaston, 33
Young, Prof. John, 11, 31, 38,
40, 62
Young, John, LL.D., 36, 62
Young, Thomas, 33
ZoFFAKi, 9, 64, 65
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