Postscript

Dr. John Hunter waited two years to reveal the existence of Charles Byrne’s skeleton, and then only to close associates. It can be seen to this day hanging at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. In 1909, a postmortem examination revealed Charles Byrne suffered from a tumor in his pituitary, the gland responsible for producing a growth hormone. In 2010 the results of tests carried out on his bones by Professor Márta Korbonits of Barts Hospital, London, were published in the New England Journal of Medicine. They revealed that Byrne and up to 300 living patients inherited their genetic variant from the same common ancestor and that this mutation is some 1,500 years old. The study of Charles Byrne’s bones makes it possible to trace carriers of this gene and treat patients before they grow to be giants.

John Hunter died in 1793 after an attack of angina, brought on by a particularly heated meeting with the board of St. George’s Hospital regarding various reforms he wished implemented. He was also betrayed by his brother-in-law, another surgeon, named Everard Home, who either plagiarized or destroyed much of his writing. Jesse Foot published his scurrilous biography in 1794.

Hunter’s remains lay forgotten in the vaults of the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, off what is now Trafalgar Square, London, until a young army surgeon discovered them in 1859 and had them reinterred to the north nave of Westminster Abbey. Three years later the Royal College of Surgeons affixed a plaque. Part of the inscription reads: The Royal College of Surgeons of England has placed this tablet on the grave of Hunter to record admiration of his genius, as a gifted interpreter of the Divine power and wisdom at work in the laws of organic life and its grateful veneration for his services to mankind as the founder of scientific surgery.