exception of a supplement to a paper by J. Ellis in the volume
for 1766, was an essay on post-mortem digestion of the stomach,
written at the request of Sir J. Pringle, and read on the 18th of
June 1772, in which he explained that phenomenon as a result of
the action of the gastric juice.[1] On the 9th of December 1768 he
was elected a surgeon to St George’s Hospital, and, soon after, a
member of the Corporation of Surgeons. He now began to take
house-pupils. Among these were Edward Jenner, who came to
him in 1770, and until the time of Hunter’s death corresponded
with him on the most intimate and affectionate terms, W. Guy,
Dr P. S. Physick of Philadelphia, and Everard Home, his brother-in-law.
William Lynn and Sir A. Carlisle, though not inmates of
his house, were frequent visitors there. His pupils at St George’s
included John Abernethy, Henry Cline, James Earle and
Astley Cooper. In 1770 he settled in Jermyn Street, in the
house which his brother William had previously occupied; and
in July 1771 he married Anne, the eldest daughter of Robert
Home, surgeon to Burgoyne’s regiment of light horse.[2]
From 1772 till his death Hunter resided during autumn at a house built by him at Earl’s Court, Brompton, where most of his biological researches were carried on. There he kept for the purpose of study and experiment the fishes, lizards, blackbirds, hedgehogs and other animals sent him from time to time by Jenner; tame pheasants and partridges, at least one eagle, toads, silkworms, and many more creatures, obtained from every quarter of the globe. Bees he had under observation in his conservatory for upwards of twenty years; hornets and wasps were also diligently studied by him. On two occasions his life was in risk from his pets—once in wrestling with a young bull, and again when he fearlessly took back to their dens two leopards which had broken loose among his dogs.
Choosing intuitively the only true method of philosophical discovery, Hunter, ever cautious of confounding fact and hypothesis, besought of nature the truth through the medium of manifold experiments and observations. “He had never read Bacon,” says G. G. Babington, “but his mode of studying nature was as strictly Baconian as if he had.”[3] To Jenner, who had offered a conjectural explanation of a phenomenon, he writes, on the 2nd of August 1775: “I think your solution is just; but why think? why not try the experiment? Repeat all the experiments upon a hedgehog[4] as soon as you receive this, and they will give you the solution.” It was his axiom however, “that experiments should not be often repeated which tend merely to establish a principle already known and admitted, but that the next step should be the application of that principle to useful purposes” (“Anim. Oecon.,” Works, iv. 86). During fifteen years he kept a flock of geese simply in order to acquaint himself with the development of birds in eggs, with reference to which he remarked: “It would almost appear that this mode of propagation was intended for investigation.” In his toxicological and other researches, in which his experience had led him to believe that the effects of noxious drugs are nearly similar in the brute creation and in man, he had already, in 1780, as he states, “poisoned some thousands of animals.”[5]
By inserting shot at definite distances in the leg-bones of young pigs, and also by feeding them with madder, by which all fresh osseous deposits are tinged,[6] Hunter obtained evidence that bones increase in size, not by the intercalation of new amongst old particles, as had been imagined by H. L. Duhamel du Monceau, but by means of additions to their extremities and circumference, excess of calcareous tissue being removed by the absorbents. Some of his most extraordinary experiments were to illustrate the relation of the strength of constitution to sex. He exchanged the spurs of a young cock and a young pullet, and found that on the former the transplanted structure grew to a fair size, on the latter but little; whereas a spur from one leg of a cock transferred to its comb, a part well supplied with blood, grew more than twice as fast as that left on the other leg. Another experiment of his, which required many trials for success, was the engrafting of a human incisor on the comb of a cock.[7] The uniting of parts of different animals when brought into contact he attributed to the production of adhesive instead of suppurative inflammation, owing to their possession of “the simple living principle.”[8] The effects of habit upon structure were illustrated by Hunter’s observation that in a sea-gull which he had brought to feed on barley the muscular parietes of the gizzard became greatly thickened. A similar phenomenon was noticed by him in the case of other carnivorous birds fed on a vegetable diet.
It was in 1772 that Hunter, in order effectually to gauge the extent of his own knowledge, and also correctly to express his views, which had been repeatedly misstated or ascribed to others, began his lectures on the theory and practice of surgery, at first delivered free to his pupils and a few friends, but subsequent to 1774 on the usual terms, four guineas. Though Pott, indeed, had perceived that the only true system of surgery is that which most closely accords with the curative efforts of nature, a rational pathology can hardly be said to have had at this time any existence; and it was generally assumed that a knowledge of anatomy alone was a sufficient foundation for the study of surgery. Hunter, unlike his contemporaries, to most of whom his philosophic habit of thought was a mystery, and whose books contained little else than relations of cases and modes of treatment, sought the reason for each phenomenon that came under his notice. The principles of surgery, he maintained, are not less necessary to be understood than the principles of other sciences; unless, indeed, the surgeon should wish to resemble “the Chinese philosopher whose knowledge consisted only in facts.” Too much attention, he remarked, cannot be paid to facts; yet a multitude of facts overcrowd the memory without advantage if they do not lead us to establish principles, by an acquaintance with which we learn the causes of diseases. Hunter’s course, which latterly comprised eighty-six lectures, delivered on alternate evenings between the hours of seven and eight, lasted from October to April. Some teachers of his time were content to dismiss the subjects of anatomy and surgery in a course of only six weeks’ duration. His class was usually small and never exceeded thirty. He was deficient in the gifts of a good extempore speaker, being in this respect a remarkable contrast to his brother William; and he read his lectures, seldom raising his eyes from the manuscript. His manner with his
- ↑ The subjects and dates of his subsequent papers in the Transactions, the titles of which give little notion of the richness of their contents, are as follows: The torpedo (1773); air-receptacles in birds, and the Gillaroo trout (1774); the Gymnotus electricus, and the production of heat by animals and vegetables (supplemented in 1777), (1775); the recovery of people apparently drowned (1776); the free martin (1779); the communication of smallpox to the foetus in utero, and the occurrence of male plumage in old hen pheasants (1780); the organ of hearing in fishes (1782); the anatomy of a “new marine animal” described by Home (1785); the specific identity of the wolf, jackal and dog (supplemented in 1789), the effect on fertility of extirpation of one ovarium, and the structure and economy of whales (1787); observations on bees (1793); and some remarkable caves in Bayreuth and fossil bones found therein (1794). With these may be included a paper by Home, from materials supplied by Hunter, on certain horny excrescences of the human body.
- ↑ Mrs Hunter died on the 7th of January 1821, in Holles Street, Cavendish Square, London, in her seventy-ninth year. She was a handsome and accomplished woman, and well fulfilled the social duties of her position. The words for Haydn’s English canzonets were supplied by her, and were mostly original poems; of these the lines beginning “My mother bids me bind my hair” are, from the beauty of the accompanying music, among the best known. (See R. Nares in Gent. Mag. xci. pt. 1, p. 89, quoted in Nichols’s Lit. Anec., 2nd ser., vii. 638.)
- ↑ Hunt. Orat., 1842, p. 15.
- ↑ The condition of this animal during hibernation was a subject of special interest to Hunter, who thus introduces it, even in a letter of condolence to Jenner in 1778 on a disappointment in love: “But let her go, never mind her. I shall employ you with hedgehogs, for I do not know how far I may trust mine.”
- ↑ See his evidence at the trial of Captain Donellan, Works, i. 195.
- ↑ On the discovery of the dyeing of bones by madder, see Belchier, Phil. Trans., vol. xxxix., 1736, pp. 287 and 299.
- ↑ Essays and Observations, i. 55, 56. “May we not claim for him,” says Sir Wm. Fergusson, with reference to these experiments, “that he anticipated by a hundred years the scientific data on which the present system of human grafting is conducted?” (Hunt. Orat., 1871, p. 17).
- ↑ Essays and Observations, i. 115; cf. Works, i. 391.
