SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES z6l 

 of a poor farmer. Being orphaned at an early age, he received a very indiffer- 

 ent education, a fact which influenced his whole life. He never even learnt 

 to spell his native language properly, nor at the beginning did he learn any 

 proper profession. At last, at the age of twenty, he went to his elder brother, 

 William, who had become a highly esteemed doctor in London and had been 

 commissioned to examine prospective army-surgeons. John began by assisting 

 at the dissection classes in connexion with this course, but during them he 

 taught himself anatomy, with such success that he was soon able to take 

 over the direction of the entire course. He continued to educate himself, 

 partly under his brother's and partly under other doctors' guidance, finally 

 receiving an appointment as surgeon, attached to the English fleet which 

 sailed to the Spanish main during the Seven Years' War. At the end of the 

 war he settled down as a physician in London, won a reputation as a clever 

 operator, and quickly obtained a remunerative post. He spent all his spare 

 time in anatomical and physiological studies, and as soon as his salary per- 

 mitted, he bought a house, in which he established a large anatomical mu- 

 seum. On this museum he sacrificed all that he could spare in the way of 

 time and money, so that at the time of his death it was undoubtedly the 

 finest of its kind in existence. He also gave private lectures in anatomy, but 

 he was not a particularly good lecturer. As a practitioner, on the other hand, 

 he was regarded as the best in London in his time. He was universally known 

 as an honest, benevolent, and charitable man, but his personal manners 

 showed his poor education, while his lack of self-control in particular gained 

 him many enemies. In a violent altercation with some of his colleagues he 

 got a stroke of apoplexy, which caused instant death. His museum was taken 

 over by the State and is to this day one of the sights of London in the sphere 

 of natural science. His manuscripts, however, were taken by a brother-in- 

 law, who first plagiarized them for his own benefit and then burnt them in 

 order to destroy all evidence of his plagiarism. 



Hunter s work in comparative anatomy 

 Hunter's scientific work falls essentially within the sphere of practical 

 medicine; his theoretical researches were always intended as foundations on 

 which to base practical medical work. His famous museum was intended 

 for a similar purpose, but on the broadest lines; he collected all kinds of 

 animals, both higher and lower, dissected them, and experimented with 

 them, setting up the preparations that he made on anatomical principles. 

 Thus he applied for the first time in practice principles of comparative anat- 

 omy as a whole, thereby creating a precedent for future research of very 

 great value. Of his writings a treatise on the natural history and diseases 

 of the teeth has been of the utmost value to biology; in it he gives an account 

 of a systematic investigation into the origin and grov\th of the teeth that 

 is far in advance of any previous work of its kind. In a treatise on inflamma- 



