218 BRITISH PHYSICIANS. attended her subsequent labours, and his success brought this new profession into vogue, and the fashion was gradually transplanted into other countries. Mawbray seems to have been the first teacher of obstetrics in London. He was lecturing in 1725, and established a lying-in hospital, to which students were admitted. The Chamberlains fol- lov/ed him — a family which professed to possess a better method of treating difficult labours than was known to others, and maintained a sort of mys- tery as to their instruments. This pretension was imitated by others. Smellie gave a new dignity to the subject by his talents and his lessons ; al- though he is accused by a rival of advertising to teach the whole science in four lectures, and of hanging out a paper lantern, inscribed with the economical invitation, " Midwifery is taught here for ^ve shillings " Wilham Hunter was born on the 2.3d of May, 1718, at Kilbride, in the county of Lanark. He was the seventh of the ten children of John and Agnes Hunter, who resided on a small estate in the above parish, called Long Calderwood, which had been long in the possession of the family. The youngest of the family was John, afterwards so celebrated as a surgeon and physiologist. One of the sisters married Dr. Baillie, the professor of divinity in the University of Glasgow, and became the mother of the eminent physician whom we shall afterwards have occasion to record. William Hunter was sent to study at Glasgow at the age of fourteen, and remained there five years, with the reputation of jDrudence and of good
