THE 



POPULAR ENCYCLOPEDIA; 



OR, 



HUNTER. 



HUNTER, JOHN; a highly celebrated practitioner 

 and writer on surgery, anatomy, and physiology, was 

 born in Kilbride parish, Lanarkshire, on the 13th 

 Feb., or, according to others, on July 14, 1728. His 

 education was neglected, and he was, at first, ap- 

 prenticed to a cabinetmaker; but hearing of the 

 success of his elder brother in London, he offered his 

 services to him as an anatomical assistant, and was 

 invited by him to London, where he arrived in Sep- 

 tember, 1748. He improved so speedily, that, in the 

 winter of 1749, he was able to undertake the instruc- 

 tion of dissecting pupils. In 1 755, he was admitted 

 to a partnership in the lectures delivered by his 

 brother, in which situation he most assiduously de- 

 voted himself to the study of practical anatomy, not 

 only of the human body, but also of brute animals, 

 for which he procured from the Tower, and from the 

 keepers of other menageries, subjects for dissection. 

 He also kept several foreign and uncommon animals 

 in his house for the purpose of studying their habits 

 and organization. In the beginning of 1767, he was 

 elected a fellow of the royal society. His first pub- 

 lication, a treatise On the Natural History of the 

 Teeth (4to), appeared in 1771. In the winter of 

 1773, he commenced a course of lectures on the 

 theory and principles of surgery, in which he deve- 

 loped some of those peculiar doctrines which he 

 afterwards explained more fully in his published 

 works. His perfect acquaintance with anatomy ren- 

 dered him a bi>ld and skilful operator, and enabled 

 him to make improvements in the modes of treating 

 certain surgical cases. But his fame chiefly rests on 

 his researches concerning comparative anatomy. In 

 1776, he obtained the appointment of surgeon-extra- 

 ordinary to the army. In 1781, he was chosen a 

 member of the royal society of Gottingen, and in 

 1783, of the royal society of medicine and academy 

 of surgery at Paris. In 1786, he published his cele- 

 brated work On the Venereal Disease. About the 

 same time appeared a quarto volume, entitled Obser- 

 vations on Various Parts of the Animal CEconomy, 

 consisting of physiological essays, most of. which had 

 been inserted in the Philosophical Transactions. His 

 Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-shot 

 Wounds, was one of the last of his literary labours. 

 On the death of Mr Adair, he was appointed inspec- 

 tor-general of hospitals and surgeon-general to the 

 army. He died October 16, 1793. His Treatise on 

 the blood, &c., was published in 1794, with an ac- 

 count of his life, by Sir Everard Home. Government 

 purchased the museum of Hunter for 15,000, and 

 transferred it to the royal college of surgeons, for the 

 use of the public. 



HUNTER, WILLIAM, M. D., elder brother of the 

 preceding, and collector of the Huuterian Museum 

 now in the university of Glasgow, was born May 

 23, 1718, at Long Calderwood, in the parish of Kil- 

 bride, eight miles from Glasgow, and, at the age of 

 fifteen, was sent to that university, where he passed 

 five years in studying as a candidate for holy orders. 

 But having accidentally become intimate with Dr 

 Cullen, then practising physic at Hamilton, he be- 

 came disgusted with theology and commenced the 

 study of medicine. In the year 1737, he went to 

 reside with Cullen, and afterwards was received into 

 partnership by him ; but, in 1740, he went in the 

 winter to Edinburgh to complete his studies, and in 

 the summer of the year following went to London 

 and lived as a pupil in the house of Dr Smellie the 

 accoucheur. Having been the bearer of an in- 

 troductory letter from Foulis, the learned printer of 

 Glasgow, to Dr James Douglas, that physician took 

 a great liking to young Hunter, and engaged him as 

 his assistant in making dissections for a splendid work 

 on the anatomy of the muscles, which he then was 

 preparing to publish. The following year he had 

 the misfortune of losing his father, and his patron, 

 Dr Douglas, by death, but he still continued to reside 

 in the doctor's family, superintending the education 

 of his son, and attending St George's hospital, as a 

 pupil, under Dr Frank Nichols. 



Pursuing his anatomical studies with ardour, he, in 

 1745, communicated a paper to the royal society re- 

 specting the structure of the cartilages of the human 

 body, and Sharpe, a lecturer on anatomy, having re- 

 signed in his favour, he commenced a course of de- 

 monstrations the same year. The profits arising from 

 this first attempt amounted to seventy guineas, great 

 part of which he very generously lent to some fellow 

 students and lost. The next year he became a mem- 

 ber of the college of surgeons, and practised surgery 

 and midwifery, but at length confined himself entirely 

 to that branch, in which he soon outstripped Dr 

 Smellie, and was appointed accoucheur to the British 

 lying-in-hospital. It was rather before this time that 

 he spent some weeks on the continent, where he ac- 

 companied young Douglas through Holland and Paris; 

 and having been greatly struck with seeing the ana- 

 tomical museum, left by the great Albinus, at Leyden, 

 it is conjectured that he then formed the design of 

 emulating the labours of that celebrated anatomist. 

 On the death of Sir Richard Maiiningham and resig- 

 nation of Dr Sandys, he became first in his line 

 of practice. In 1750, he obtained his Doctor's degree 

 from the university of Glasgow, and then quitted 

 Dr Douglas's family, and took a house in Jerinyu 



