264 Britain's Heritage of Science 



returning to London in 1763, he began to practise as a 

 surgeon in Golden Square, and here he first started on his 

 famous collections. The menagerie at the Tower and other 

 private zoological gardens served him with material, and he 

 spared neither time nor money to add to his museum. In 

 1764 he built himself a house at Earl's Court, Kensington, 

 which was properly fitted for macerating, injecting, and 

 dissecting the bodies of animals, and was also provided 

 with cages for keeping them alive. His sympathy was in 

 no way confined to the vertebrates, for he had ponds in 

 which he tried artificially to produce pearls in oysters, and 

 he was very fond of bees, though in truth his real passion 

 was for the fiercer kind of carnivora. 



John Hunter helped a number of men who have left 

 their mark in the medical profession. Perhaps the most dis- 

 tinguished of these was Edward Jenner, but Astley Cooper, 

 John Abernethy, Henry Cline, James McCartney were also 

 of the company. In 1783 he built a large museum, with 

 lecture-rooms, in Leicester Square, and about this time he 

 made his well-known discovery on the collateral circulation 

 by anastomosing branches of blood-vessels. 



In character he seems to have been impatient and rather 

 rough, incapable of readily expounding the information that 

 he had acquired information that was mostly from direct 

 observation, for he read but little. He was a strong Tory, 

 and it is stated that he would rather have seen his museum 

 burning than show it to a democrat. Hunter stood at the 

 head of British surgery, but he was more than a surgeon, 

 he was an all-round anatomist, with wide and scientific 

 views as to what life meant. His claim to appear in these 

 pages is that he was also a great comparative anatomist, 

 though his zoology was always secondary to his surgery. 

 By his will his museum was offered to the British Govern- 

 ment on reasonable terms, and in case they refused it was 

 to be sold to some foreign State or put up to auction. 

 National finance in 1793 was, however, at a low ebb, and 

 Mr. Pitt showed no eagerness to complete the purchase. 

 Six years later the Government recommended the collection 

 should be bought for 15,000, knowing well that it was 

 worth a great deal more. However, the purchase was 



