A MEMOIR 



OF 



THE LIFE OF 

 ALEXANDER HUNTER, M. D. 



The Doctor was bom at Edinburgh in the year 1733. His father 

 was an eminent druggist in that city, and being possessed of about 

 two hundred pounds a-year in houses, independent of his business, he 

 was enabled to give his children a very liberal education. His eldest son, 

 Alexander, was placed at the grammar-school when he was about 

 ten years of age, and having passed through all the forms, he was entered 

 in his fifteenth at the University, which he quitted at twenty-one, 

 having for the last three years made medicine his principal study. On 

 finishing his classical, philosophical, and medical education at Edinburgh, 

 he went to London, with a view to improve himself in the line of his 

 profession. There he continued one winter, after which he proceeded 

 to Rouen in Normandy, placing himself under the care of Monsieur 

 Le Cat, in order to perfect himself in Anatomy, to which science he 

 was strongly a,ttached, After spending half a year at Rouen, he was 

 eight months at Paris, under the direction of the celebrated physician 

 and anatomist Dr. Petit. Returning to London, he remained there a 

 short time, in expectation of being engaged by Dr. Hunter as an assistant 

 in his anatomical school. In this expectation he did not succeed, so that 

 he determined to go to Edinburgh, with a view to take a degree in medi- 

 cine, and settle there. The former resolution he accomplished with 

 credit to himself, but, for family reasons, he relinquished the latter, pur- 

 posing to reside in England, a country to which he was always partial. 

 On this plan he consulted Mr. Winn, an eminent surgeon in Leeds, 

 and a particular friend of his father's, by whom he was advised to fix 

 at Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire ; but this situation not equalling his 

 wishes, he removed, after a stay of a few months, to Beverley, where 

 there was a vacancy occasioned by the demise of the only resident 

 physician. From this place, in the year 1763, he was invited to York, 

 on the decease of Dr. Perrot, and there he enjoyed a most extensive 

 practice till his death, which happened the 17th of May, 1809. 



