ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY 



mists of the eighteenth century, and particularly as 

 the first great teacher of anatomy in England ; but his 

 fame has been somewhat overshadowed by that of his 

 younger brother John. 



Hunter had been intended and educated for the 

 Church, but on the advice of the surgeon William 

 Cullen he turned his attention to the study of medi- 

 cine. His first attempt at teaching was in 1746, when 

 he delivered a series of lectures on surgery for the 

 Society of Naval Practitioners. These lectures proved 

 so interesting and instructive that he was at once in- 

 vited to give others, and his reputation as a lecturer 

 was soon established. He was a natural orator and 

 story-teller, and he combined with these attractive 

 qualities that of thoroughness and clearness in dem- 

 onstrations, and although his lectures were two hours 

 long he made them so full of interest that his pupils 

 seldom tired of listening. He believed that he could 

 do greater good to the world by ' ' publicly teaching his 

 art than by practising it," and even during the last 

 few days of his life, when he was so weak that his 

 friends remonstrated against it, he continued his teach- 

 ing, fainting from exhaustion at the end of his last 

 lecture, which preceded his death by only a few days. 



For many years it was Hunter's ambition to estab- 

 lish a museum where the study of anatomy, surgery, 

 and medicine might be advanced, and in 1765 he asked 

 for a grant of a plot of ground for this purpos^e, offering 

 to spend seven thousand pounds on its erection besides 

 endowing it with a professorship of anatomy. Not being 

 able to obtain this grant, however, he built a house, 

 in which were lecture and dissecting rooms, and his 



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