NOTES

1. The Coach Driver’s Knee

Everard Home, “An Account of Mr Hunter’s Method of Performing the Operation for the Cure of the Popliteal Aneurysm from Materials Furnished by Mr Hunter,” Transactions of a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge 1 (1793): 138–181. Details about the coach driver and his operation are taken from the above unless otherwise indicated.

My thanks for their advice to Sir Peter Bell, professor of surgery at Leicester Royal Infirmary; Professor Harold Ellis, clinical anatomist at Guy’s, King’s, and St. Thomas’ School of Biomedical Sciences; and Alan Scott, honorary consultant in vascular surgery and director of the UK multicenter aneurysm screening study. The causes of aneurysms are still unclear, but they occur when the elastin in an artery loses its elasticity, causing the walls to bulge outward. Professor Bell and Professor Ellis believe it possible that the top of a coachman’s boots could injure the artery walls at the back of the knee if these had already been weakened by the underlying condition.

JH, Case Books, pp. 450–451.

The figures are cited by John Gunning, William Walker, and Thomas Keate (Hunter’s enemies) in a letter to the governors, n.d. (1793), transcribed in George C. Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 282–296.

Jessé Foot, The Life, p. 280.

Ibid., p. 242.

E. H. Cornelius, “John Hunter As an Expert Witness,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 60 (1978): 412–418. Giving evidence as an expert witness at a murder trial in 1781, Hunter had been asked, “I presume you have dissected more than any man in Europe?” and he agreed, saying, “I have dissected some thousands during these thirty-three years.”

Percivall Pott, The Chirurgical Works of Percivall Pott (London: printed for T. Lowndes, 1779), vol. 3, p. 202.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 536, citing Bromfield’s views.

JH to Edward Jenner, August 2 (no year), in JH, Letters from the Past, p. 9.

Steven G. Friedman, A History of Vascular Surgery (New York: Futura, 1989), passim.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 536.

Home, “An Account.”

Details of the stag experiment were reputedly handed down from William Bell, Hunter’s assistant at the time, to a later assistant, William Clift, who retold the story to the nineteenth-century naturalist Richard Owen. See Lloyd G. Stevenson, “The Stag of Richmond Park,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 22 (1948): 467–475; Stevenson, “A Further Note on John Hunter and Aneurysm,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 26 (1952): 162–167; British Medical Journal 1 (1879): 284–285; Jessie Dobson, ed., Descriptive Catalogue of the Physiological Series in the Hunterian Museum (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1970), part 1, pp. 4–8.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 536.

Paolo Assalini, Manuale di Chirurgia del Cavaliere Assalini (Milan: Pirola, 1812), p. 86. My thanks to Robinetta Gaze for her translation from the Italian.

Particular thanks to Professor Harold Ellis for explaining Hunter’s operation, and to Alan Scott and Sir Peter Bell (see note 2) for describing modern treatment. Today, the problem is commonly tackled with bypass surgery, using either a synthetic vessel or a section of vein taken from the thigh, although smaller aneurysms are still occasionally treated by tying the artery above and below and relying on collateral circulation, as in Hunter’s day.

David C. Schechter and John J. Bergan, “Popliteal Aneurysm: A Celebration of the Bicentennial of John Hunter’s Operation,” Annals of Vascular Surgery 1 (1986): 118–126; Assalini, Manuale di Chirurgia, p. 86.

The leg of the first coach driver can still be seen in the Hunterian Museum, specimen P 275, alongside the limb of the fourth patient, specimen P 279, which was obtained by a Hunter disciple, Thomas Wormald, from the man’s widow in 1837.

2. The Dead Man’s Arm

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xv. Here Home describes Hunter’s first human dissection.

In William Hunter to James Hunter, September 17, 1743, HBC, vol. 2, p. 5, William refers to his “darling London.” There are several studies detailing William’s life. The most useful include C. Helen Brock, “The Happiness of Riches,” in William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, ed. William Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 35–54; C. Helen Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783: A Memoir by Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1983), in which JH annotated an early biography of his brother; C. Helen Brock, “The Early Years of James, William and John Hunter” (Ph.D. thesis, 1977), East Kilbride public library; Sir Charles Illingworth, The Story of William Hunter (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1967).

Controversy surrounds the date of Hunter’s birth. Although the parish register (old parish register of East Kilbride, copy in East Kilbride public library) records his birth on February 13, 1728, Hunter always celebrated his birthday on February 14. Most likely, the exact time of his birth in a dimly lighted room in the middle of the night went unrecorded. Even today the Hunterian Society celebrates Hunter’s birthday on February 13, while the RCS honors him on February 14.

Hunter’s parents’ date of marriage and his siblings’ dates of birth and death are recorded in the Hunter family Bible, RCS. The children’s dates of birth are also given in the old parish register of East Kilbride.

For details of the history of East Kilbride and the Hunter brothers’ early lives, see David Ure, The History of Rutherglen and East Kilbride (Glasgow: David Niven, 1793); and T. E. Niven, East Kilbride: The History of Parish and Village (Glasgow: Gavin Watson, 1965). Many thanks for his advice and clarification to Bill Niven, local historian and former provost (mayor) of East Kilbride, whose father, Eric (T. E.) Niven, previously charted the history of the village.

The house where John Hunter was born at Long Calderwood is preserved as a museum, the Hunter House Museum (see Hunter sites on pages 287–288). Contrary to popular belief, William Hunter was born in the village, before the family moved to Long Calderwood, according to the old parish register. Thanks to Bill Niven for pointing this out.

Stephen Paget, John Hunter, p. 27.

Reminiscences of Dorothea Baillie, told to her daughters Agnes and Joanna Baillie, HBC, vol. 2, p. 1, and vol. 6, p. 18.

Hunter’s pupils Astley Cooper and John Abernethy both said that Hunter had men read for him: See R. C. Brock, The Life and Work of Astley Cooper (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1952), p. 47; and John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), p. 202. Hunter displayed classic symptoms of dyslexia, according to the British Dyslexia Association (personal communication to the author, August 2003).

Article from European Magazine in 1782, reprinted in Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, pp. 341–352.

Jessé Foot, The Life, p. 60.

W. R. Le Fanu, A Bibliography of Edward Jenner (Winchester: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1985), p. 101. Hunter’s comment is recorded by Benjamin Waterhouse in a letter to Jenner, April 24, 1801.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 217; Richard Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy (London: RCS, 1840), vol. 5, p. xiii.

Peter Laslett, The World We Have Lost—Further Explored, 3d ed. (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 108. The figure for life expectancy at birth in England in 1751 is given as 36.6 years.

M. Dorothy George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century (London: Peregrine, 1966), p. 399.

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (London: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 245–303. For more discussion of medicine in the age of enlightenment, see Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World (London: Penguin, 2000).

Gentleman’s Magazine, 18 (1748), pp. 348–350.

T. Jock Murray, “The Medical History of Dr Samuel Johnson,” The Nova Scotia Medical Bulletin (June–August 1982): 71–78.

The New Dispensatory of the Royal College of Physicians of London, with Copious and Accurate Indexes. Faithfully Translated from the Latin of the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis (London: W. Owen, 1746).

Reminiscences of Dorothea Baillie, told to her daughters Agnes and Joanna Baillie, HBC, vol. 6, p. 18.

George, London Life in the Eighteenth Century, p. 37.

Hogarth published his etching Gin Lane on February 1, 1753.

Susan C. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge: Hospital Pupils and Practitioners in Eighteenth-Century London (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 85.

John P. Blandy and John S. P. Lumley, eds., The Royal College of Surgeons of England: 200 Years of History at the Millennium (London and Oxford: Royal College of Surgeons of England, Blackwell Science, 2000), pp. 6–7.

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures (London: printed by order of the trustees for J. Johnson, 1784), pp. 88–89.

Ernest Finch, “The Influence of the Hunters on Medical Education,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 20 (1957): 205–248.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. xv.

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures, p. 102.

3. The Stout Man’s Muscles

Middlesex Sessions Rolls, December 1747 (ms. 2889), London Metropolitan Archives. The case was also reported in Gentleman’s Magazine, 17 (1747), p. 591; and Westminster Journal, December 26, 1747, BL.

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures (London: printed by order of the trustees for J. Johnson, 1784), p. 87 (William’s italics).

Christopher Lawrence, “Alexander Monro Primus and the Edinburgh Manner of Anatomy,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 62 (1988): 193–214.

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures, p. 87.

William Hunter, Medical Commentaries (London: A. Hamilton, 1762), p. 8.

Alan F. Guttmacher, “Bootlegging Bodies: A History of Body-Snatching,” Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 4 (1935): 352–402.

Samuel Pepys, The Shorter Pepys, ed. Robert Latham (London: Penguin, 1985), p. 261.

Toby Gelfand, “The ‘Paris Manner’ of Dissection: Student Anatomical Dissection in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 16 (1972): 99–130; and Guttmacher, “Bootlegging Bodies.” The legal situation would remain unchanged until the Anatomy Act of 1832 provided a source of unclaimed bodies from workhouses.

Ralph Hyde, ed., The A to Z of Georgian London (Lympne Castle, Kent: Harry Margary in association with Guildhall Library, London, 1981). The site of Tyburn Tree is shown on John Rocque’s map of 1747 at the junctions of Tiburn Lane and Tiburn Road (today Park Lane and Oxford Street), near to where Marble Arch now stands on the northeast corner of Hyde Park. The ten convicts hanged on October 28, 1748, are named and their crimes are listed on “The Proceedings of the Old Bailey” Web site ( www.oldbaileyonline.org). General information on hanging and the anatomists’ battles for bodies can be found in Andrew Langley, Georgian Britain 1714 to 1837 (London: Hamlyn, 1994); Peter Linebaugh, The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth Century (London: Allen Lane, 1991); and Linebaugh, “The Tyburn Riot Against the Surgeons,” in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay (London: Allen Lane, 1975), pp. 65–117.

Samuel Richardson, Familiar Letters on Important Occasions, cited in Linebaugh, “The Tyburn Riot.” He was describing a scene in 1740.

Linebaugh, The London Hanged, pp. 38–39.

Martin Fido, Bodysnatchers: A History of the Resurrectionists, 1742–1832 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1988), pp. 4–5. The skeleton of Jonathan Wild remains at RCS headquarters in Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Ruth Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute (London: Phoenix Press, 2001). Richardson’s book provides a detailed analysis of public opinion toward dissection and body snatching.

Cecil Howard Turner, The Inhumanists (London: A. Ouseley, 1932), p. 50.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 159.

Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute, p. 31.

Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Anatomy, July 22, 1828, BL. Evidence to the select committee was given by two of John Hunter’s pupils, Sir Astley Cooper and John Abernethy, and by Abernethy’s former assistant, Dr. James Macartney, as well as by two anonymous body snatchers, A. B. and C. D.

Turner, The Inhumanists, p. 107 (Turner reports the grave robbing in Scotland); George C. Peachey, A Memoir, p. 42 (Peachey records the situation in Oxford).

JH, Case Books, pp. 308–309.

General information on body snatching can be found in Turner, The Inhumanists; Richardson, Death, Dissection and the Destitute ; Fido, Bodysnatchers; James Blake Bailey, ed., The Diary of a Resurrectionist 1811–1812 (London: Swan Sonnenschein, 1896); and in the Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Anatomy.

Linebaugh, “The Tyburn Riot.”

Bransby Blake Cooper, The Life of Sir Astley Cooper (London: J. W. Parker, 1843), passim. Astley Cooper’s nephew, Bransby Cooper, outlined the body snatchers’ methods in his biography of the surgeon. Rigor mortis—the process in which the dead body stiffens—usually begins a few hours after death and is complete in about twelve hours. It then wears off and the body becomes limp again within twenty-four to thirty-six hours of death, although the process takes longer in colder temperatures. My thanks to Dr. Alistair Hunter, academic manager of the dissecting rooms at Guy’s, King’s, and St. Thomas’ School of Biomedical Sciences, for advice.

Liza Picard, Dr Johnson’s London (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000), p. 297. Picard gives the monthly wage of a seaman with the East India Company as one pound, fifteen shillings in 1762.

Report from the Select Committee of the House of Commons on Anatomy, evidence from Sir Astley Cooper.

Bailey, ed., The Diary of a Resurrectionist, p. 145. The incident described relates to an evening in 1812. The writer has been identified as the notorious gang leader Joshua Naples.

JH, Case Books, pp. 313–314.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” p. 10.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 158.

JH, The Works, Atlas, pp. 5–6.

William Hunter, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus Exhibited in Figures (Birmingham: J. Baskerville, S. Baker and G. Leigh, 1774).

Article from European Magazine in 1782, reprinted in John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), pp. 341–352.

In The Dissecting Room, c. 1770, William is shown standing just left of center, with John at his left elbow.

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures, p. 113.

C. Helen Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783: A Memoir by Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1983), p. 5. The description is given in John Hunter’s annotations.

Jane M. Oppenheimer, “John and William Hunter and Some Contemporaries in Literature and Art,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 23 (1949): 21–47.

Joseph Adams, Memoirs, p. 37; John Abernethy, Hunterian Oration (1819), in Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, p. 54.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 10.

Jessé Foot, The Life, pp. 81–82.

4. The Pregnant Woman’s Womb

C. G. T. Dean, The Royal Hospital Chelsea (London: Hutchinson, 1950), passim. The Royal Hospital Chelsea still provides a home for army pensioners today, while the grounds are the venue for the annual Chelsea Flower Show.

Biographical detail about William Cheselden can be found in Sir Zachary Cope, William Cheselden 1688–1752 (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1953); Knut Haeger, The Illustrated History of Surgery. Revised and updated ed., ed. Sir Roy Calne (London: Harold Starke; Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000); Sidney Lee and Leslie Stephen, eds., Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1908–1909); John P. Blandy and John S. P. Lumley, eds., The Royal College of Surgeons of England: 200 Years of History at the Millennium (London and Oxford: Royal College of Surgeons of England and Blackwell Science, 2000); Sir Zachary Cope, The Royal College of Surgeons of England: A History (London: Anthony Blond, 1959).

Details of the lithotomy operation and ancient surgery in general can be found in Ghislaine Lawrence, “Surgery (Traditional),” in Companion Encyclopaedia of the History of Medicine, ed. William Bynum and Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 961–983. Today, bladder stones are much less common, although doctors are uncertain why; different diets may be the reason. Surgeons today normally remove bladder stones in an operation that involves opening the bladder via the abdomen, or by using a special instrument, a lithotrope, which is inserted through the urethra into the bladder to crush a stone. In either case, the patient would be under a general anesthetic. Occasionally, lasers or ultrasound is used to destroy a stone. The lithotomy position, as used by Cheselden, survives in operations for hemorrhoids and similar conditions (personal communication to the author from Professor David Kirk, consultant urologist, Gartnavel General Hospital, Glasgow, November 2003).

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (London: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 235.

Cheselden’s lithotomy operations are described in detail in Cope, William Cheselden 1688–1752; and Cope, The Royal College of Surgeons of England. Other aspects are discussed in Ira M. Rutkow, Surgery: An Illustrated History (St. Louis: Mosby-Year Book, Inc., in collaboration with Norman Pub, 1993), pp. 263–267; Toby Gelfand, “The “Paris Manner” of Dissection: Student Anatomical Dissection in Early Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 16 (1972): 99–130. Dr. James Douglas, who witnessed many of Cheselden’s lithotomies, recorded that “he seldom exceeds half a Minute” (quoted in Cope, William Cheselden 1688–1752, p. 29).

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures (London: printed by order of the trustees for J. Johnson, 1784), p. 73.

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xvi.

Joan Lane, “The Role of Apprenticeship in Eighteenth-Century Medical Education in England,” and Toby Gelfand, “ ‘Invite the Philosopher, As Well As the Charitable’: Hospital Training as Private Enterprise in Hunterian London,” both in William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, ed. William Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 57–103 and 129–151; Susan C. Lawrence, Charitable Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), passim.

There are no records of Hunter’s work with Cheselden. General information on eighteenth-century operations can be found in Guy Williams, The Age of Agony (London: Constable, 1975), while the surgical instruments used are discussed in David J. Warren, Old Medical and Dental Instruments (Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire: Shire Publications, Ltd., 1994).

Rutkow, Surgery, pp. 266–267.

Le Dran, The Operations in Surgery of Mons. Le Dran, Translated by Thomas Gataker with Remarks, Plates of the Operations, and a Sett of Instruments by William Cheselden (London: C. Hitch and R. Dodsley, 1749), passim. Details of Cheselden’s methods of amputation, trepanning, and the operation for a harelip are all taken from his comments on Le Dran’s surgery. General details are also taken from Lorenz Heister, A General System of Surgery, 2d ed. (London: W. Innys, 1745).

Cope, William Cheselden 1688–1752, pp. 75–79. Today, cataract surgery entails a similar technique in removing the hard, opaque part of the lens, although nowadays this is replaced with an artificial implant and, naturally, the operation is performed with the use of an anesthetic.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. xvi.

Agnes Baillie to Matthew Baillie, RCS. Relating the memories of her mother, Dorothea, William and John’s sister, Agnes described the dissecting room as being behind their house in Covent Garden (HBC, vol. 2, p. 1). Detail on Covent Garden can be found in Survey of London (London Survey Committee, 1970), vol. 36; and in Sheila O’Connell, London 1753 (London: British Museum Press, 2003), catalog to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the British Museum, May 23 to November 23, 2003.

For help in understanding the process of dissection in Hunter’s day, as well as for the privilege of witnessing modern medical students undertaking a dissection class, I am indebted to Dr. Alistair Hunter, academic manager of the dissecting rooms, and Professor Harold Ellis, clinical anatomist, at Guy’s, King’s, and St. Thomas’ School of Biomedical Sciences, as well as all the staff in the dissecting rooms at Guy’s.

JH, Case Books, pp. 401–402, 405.

John M. T. Ford, ed., A Medical Student at St Thomas’s Hospital, 1801–1802: The Weekes Family Letters (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1987), p. 78.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, “Some Observations on Digestion,” pp. 81–116, for description of the gastric juices; JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 189, for description of the taste of semen.

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures, pp. 110, 91.

Hunter described his methods in JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, “On Making Anatomical Preparations by Injections, etc.,” pp. 385–398. General information on preparations can be found in F. J. Cole, A History of Comparative Anatomy from Aristotle to the Eighteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1944), pp. 445–450.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 124.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” pp. 75–76.

C. Helen Brock, Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter, 1740–83 (Cambridge: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 1996), p. i. Maggie Riley, at the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, has estimated that William’s original collection numbered 3,755 (personal communication to the author, 2002). Only a handful can now be positively identified as JH’s handiwork, based on his descriptions of his research, but hundreds more must have sprung from his knife.

William Hunter, The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus Exhibited in Figures (Birmingham: J. Baskerville, S. Baker and G. Leigh, 1774). William Hunter gives the date of the arrival of the body as 1751 in the preface of his Gravid Uterus, but in the text he refers to the winter of 1750. In fact, the drawings by van Rymsdyk are dated 1750, as confirmed by the staff at Glasgow University Library, Special Collections (personal communication to the author, 2003). All quotes from William are from the preface unless otherwise stated.

John H. Teacher, Catalogue of the Anatomical and Pathological Preparations of Dr William Hunter in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow (Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons, 1900), vol. 1, pp. xlix–l. Teacher has shown that twelve plates are dated—I to X in 1750, XV and XXVI in 1754—and that four undated plates—XIII, XXI, XXII, and XXXII—are probably from the years 1750–1754. The plates depict six women. William refers to the second and third “subjects” arriving before the first ten plates were completed.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. 62.

John H. Teacher, Catalogue of the Anatomical and Pathological Preparations of Dr William Hunter in the Hunterian Museum, pp. 326, 396–404, 509, 571–573, 589–590. Teacher details which of the specimens in William’s collection (at Glasgow University) can be identified as John’s work. Just four of the items recorded in JH’s first catalog, created in about 1764, can categorically be dated to his time in Covent Garden. JH, “A Copy of the Oldest Portion of Catalogue, in Mr Hunter’s Own Handwriting,” n.d., ms. 49 e 53, RCS.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 210.

JH, A Treatise on the Venereal Disease (London: Gand W Nicol, 3rd ed., 1810), pp. 128–129. Hunter said he treated the sweep in “about the year 1752,” dating it to his spell at St. Bartholomew’s.

5. The Professor’s Testicle

Biographical details of Alexander Monro, Jr., and the Monro dynasty in general can be found in T. V. N. Persaud, A History of Anatomy: The Post-Vesalian Era (Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, c. 1997); and Malcolm Nicolson, “Medicine,” in Scotland: A Concise Cultural History, ed. P. H. Scott (Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1993), pp. 327–342.

William Hunter, Medical Commentaries (London: A. Hamilton, 1762), p. 19. The dates, details, and comments regarding the arguments between the Hunters and the Monros, and the Hunters with Pott, are all taken from William’s Medical Commentaries unless otherwise stated.

C. Helen Brock, Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter, 1740–83 (Cambridge: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 1996), p. 7. Since his degree came from a Scottish university instead of from Oxford or Cambridge, William was allowed to become only a licentiate of the college, rather than a full fellow, much to his chagrin.

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (London: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 182, 183, 242.

William refused to allow John to visit their dying mother in 1751, despite her appeals, arguing, “I cannot consent this season to her request, for my brother’s sake, for my own sake, and even for my mother’s sake.” John visited Long Calderwood in 1752 for the last time and took Dorothy back to London on his return. See John Thomson, An Account of the Life, Lectures and Writings of William Cullen, MD (Edinburgh: W. Blackwood and Sons, 1859), vol. 1, appendix, correspondence with William Hunter, p. 540–543.

C. Helen Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783: A Memoir by Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1983), p. 41. Observation made in John Hunter’s annotations.

“Reviews and Notices,” British Medical Journal (1861): 303–305. The statement quoted is that of Alexander Carlyle.

Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783, p. 8. The remark is found in John Hunter’s annotations.

Copy of John’s signature, written as Johannes Hunter, in the enrollment register at Oxford University, June 5, 1755, preserved in HA.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” p. 14, quoting Hunter speaking to his pupil Sir Anthony Carlisle.

Letter from Minson Hales to John Hunter, April 11, 1753, quoted in Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter 1740–83, ed. Brock. Glasgow University Library, Special Collections, 1993; refers to William having been “dangerously ill.” Ottley, “The Life,” p. 16. Ottley states that John took over a portion of the lectures in 1754.

Useful sources on the history of anatomy include Persaud, A History of Anatomy; Roger French, “The Anatomical Tradition,” in Companion Encyclopaedia of the History of Medicine, ed. William Bynum and Roy Porter (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 81–101; and Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind. William Hunter provided his students with a summary in the first lecture of each course. See William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures (London: printed by order of the trustees for J. Johnson, 1784).

The history of discoveries of the lymphatic system is explained in Nellie B. Eales, “The History of the Lymphatic System, with Special Reference to the Hunter-Monro Controversy,” Journal of the History of Medicine 29 (1974): 280–294, as well as in sources mentioned heretofore on the general history of anatomy.

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xviii. The animals mentioned are listed in JH, “A Copy of the Oldest Portion of Catalogue, in Mr Hunter’s Own Handwriting,” n.d., ms. 49 e 53 RCS. Hunter is understood to have made his arrangement with the menagerie at some point in the 1750s. The specimens listed in this first catalog were all collected before 1764, and since Hunter spent most of the latter period in the army, most of these animals were probably obtained before 1760, while he worked with William.

JH, The Works, vol. 3, pp. 76–77; Stephen Inwood, The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Strange and Inventive Life of Robert Hooke 1635–1703 (London: Macmillan, 2002), p. 47.

Andrew Cunningham, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy Before 1800, I: Old Physiology—the Pen,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 33 (2002): 631–665. Details of eighteenth-century embryology research can also be found in Brian Cook, Contributions of the Hunter Brothers to Our Understanding of Reproduction: An Exhibition from the University Library’s Collections (leaflet, Glasgow University Library, Special Collections Department, 1992).

Hunter’s experiments on embryology were published in JH, Essays and Observations. He described the methods of investigating chicken embryos in JH, “Of the Different Methods to Be Taken to Examine the Progress of the Chick in Incubated Eggs,” n.d., ms. 49 d 11, RCS; also reprinted in Richard Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy, Vol. 5 (London: RCS, 1840).

For general background on contemporary microscopes, see James B. McCormick, Eighteenth Century Microscopes: Synopsis of History and Workbooks (Lincolnwood, IL: Science Heritage, Ltd., 1987).

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 187–192.

JH, “A Copy of the Oldest Portion of Catalogue,” p. 16. Specimen C4, showing the first pair of cranial nerves, is dated 1754 and was therefore in Hunter’s original collection. The specimen can no longer be located.

William Hunter, Medical Commentaries, pp. 1–4.

Nellie B. Eales, “The History of the Lymphatic System”; the quote is from Alexander Monro, Jr., De testibus et de semine in variis animalibus (Edinburgh, 1755), p. 55. Other details of the Hunters’ row with the Monros are taken from William Hunter, Medical Commentaries.

William Hunter, Medical Commentaries, p. 7 (William’s italics).

Ibid., p. 34. The injections were made at some point in 1753 or 1754— William was later unsure of the exact year. William reported John’s ambition to trace the entire system.

The pupils’ register of St. George’s Hospital, 3 vols., transcript at RCS. Vol. 1, p. 1, records that John Hunter was appointed a house surgeon on May 5, 1756.

Information on the hospital’s history is taken from George C. Peachey, History of St George’s Hospital (London: J. Bale, 1910–1914).

Jessé Foot, The Life, pp. 75–76. Foot describes the duties of a house surgeon as well as that person’s responsibility for the keys of the “dead house.”

C. Helen Brock, Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter 1740–83, p. 10. According to Brock, William took a lease on the Jermyn Street house in the summer of 1756.

William describes the interest in John’s new research in William Hunter, Medical Commentaries, p. 89. John himself describes the investigations in JH, “Observations on the State of the Testis in the Foetus, and on the Hernia Congenita,” ibid., pp. 75–89.

The argument with Pott is described fully in William Hunter, Medical Commentaries, supplement to the first part, pp. 12–27; it is also discussed in Fenwick Beekman, “The ‘Hernia Congenita’ and an Account of the Controversy It Provoked Between William Hunter and Percivall Pott,” Bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine 22 (1946): 486–500.

Beekman, “The ‘Hernia Congenita,’ ” quoting Pott’s second edition of A Treatise on Ruptures (London: L. Hawes, W. Clarke, and R. Collins, 1763), p. 139.

Article from European Magazine in 1782, reprinted in John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), pp. 341–352.

William Hunter, Medical Commentaries, supplement to the first part, p. iii.

Nellie B. Eales, “The History of the Lymphatic System.”

The details of the experiments on the five animals are described by John Hunter in William Hunter, Medical Commentaries, pp. 42–48. Technically, certain fats can enter the veins, but only in minute quantities.

Joseph Wright, An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump, exhibited 1768, National Gallery, London.

JH, “The Modern History of the Absorbing System,” n.d., ms. 49 e 5, RCS. These notes, in the handwriting of Hunter’s later assistant and brother-in-law Everard Home, were apparently part of an original catalog to Hunter’s museum.

John Wiltshire, Samuel Johnson in the Medical World, the Doctor and the Patient (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 128–138, quoting Samuel Johnson, The Idler 17 (1758).

Wiltshire argues persuasively that Haller, not Hunter, was the target of Johnson’s attack. Haller’s experiments are discussed in Andrew Cunningham, “The Pen and the Sword,” p. 653.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, “Some Observations on Digestion,” pp. 81–116.

Betsy Copping Corner, ed., William Shippen, Jr., Pioneer in American Medical Education, With Notes, and the Original Text of Shippen’s Student Diary, London, 1759–60, Together with a Translation of His Edinburgh Dissertation, 1761 (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1951), p. 7; quoting a letter from William Shippen, Sr., to his brother, Edward Shippen, September 1, 1758.

Ibid., Shippen’s Student Diary, October 2 and 9, 1759, p. 25.

Dictionary of American Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press; New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1928–1958), vol. 42, pp. 117–118.

The period from 1760 to March 1761 in Hunter’s life is fairly obscure. Various biographers refer to his falling ill in 1759 or 1760, but the latter seems most likely, since he was clearly in fine form while Shippen lodged in his house (from fall of 1759 until January 1760). Foot and Home, early biographers, both say his health suffered in 1760, while Ottley states he suffered from an inflammation of the lungs. William refers to his brother’s ill health in his Medical Commentaries without being specific about the date. In his “The Animal Oeconomy,” John says unequivocally that he “quitted” anatomy in 1760, and in an unpublished ms., he says this was in the “early summer” of 1760. Yet he records two postmortems and one case of treatment in his casebooks that summer. An article on his lectures in the European Magazine in 1780, apparently approved by Hunter, attributes his decision to quit to his desire “for a more enlarged field of observation.” He was living in Covent Garden again in the winter of 1760–1761, when Morgan was staying there, according to Bell’s biography of Morgan. Foot, The Life, p. 74; Home, “A Short Account,” p. xviii; Ottley, “The Life,” p. 20; William Hunter, Medical Commentaries, p. 35; JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. 292; JH, “The Modern History of the Absorbing System,” n.d., ms. 49 e 5, RCS; JH, Case Books, p. 317 (two postmortems) and pp. 111–112 (surgical care); article in the European Magazine (1782); Whitfield J. Bell, John Morgan, Continental Doctor (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1965), p. 48.

6. The Lizard’s Tails

T. Keppel, The Life of Augustus Viscount Keppel (London: Henry Colburn, 1842), pp. 293–320. Keppel’s concerns about the troops are related in letters from Maj.-Gen. Studholme Hodgson to the earl of Albermarle. His “secret instructions” are also detailed here.

Details of the Seven Years War and the Battle for Belle-Ile are related in Tom Pocock, Battle for Empire: The Very First World War 1756–63 (London: Michael O’Mara, Ltd., 1998); J. Fortescue, A History of the British Army (London: Macmillan and Co., 1899), vol. 2, pp. 521–538; and W. Clowes, The Royal Navy: A History (New York: AMS Press, 1966), vol. 3, pp. 234–236.

Roy Porter, Blood and Guts: A Short History of Medicine (London: Penguin, 2003), p. 109.

A. Peterkin, William Johnston, and R. Drew, Commissioned Officers in the Medical Services of the British Army 1660–1960 (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1968), vol. 1, p. 33.

Jeremy Lewis, Tobias Smollett (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), p. 28. The excerpt from Smollett’s novel is from Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of Roderick Random (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1748), p. 187.

Keppel, The Life of Augustus Viscount Keppel, p. 309, quoting a letter from Hodgson to the earl of Albemarle, April 12, 1761.

Gentleman’s Magazine, 31 (1761), p. 229, quoting a letter from Hodgson reporting the victory, April 23.

JH, The Works, vol. 3, p. 559.

JH, Case Books, p. 65; Jessie Dobson, John Hunter, p. 55.

Sir Neil Cantlie, A History of the Army Medical Department (Edinburgh and London: Churchill Livingstone, 1974), vol. 1, p. 133.

Ibid., p. 107.

Dobson, John Hunter, p. 51.

JH to William Hunter, May 28, 1762, published in the Medical Times and Gazette (1867), pp. 515–516. Four of John’s letters to William from Belle-Ile are preserved in the RCS Library, HBC, vol. 2, while two more—cited above and March 23, 1762—were discovered later and published in the Medical Times and Gazette.

G. E. Gask, “John Hunter in the Campaign in Portugal, 1762–3,” British Journal of Surgery 24 (1936–1937): 640–667. Page 664 cites pay rates of different medical staff.

JH to William Hunter, September 28, 1761, HBC, vol. 2, p. 18.

Many thanks to Mick Crumplin, honorary consultant surgeon and honorary curator at the Royal College of Surgeons, for advice on Hunter’s treatment of gunshot wounds compared to that of his contemporaries, as well as for general advice on army surgery. Debridement—cutting away deadened tissue—is the accepted practice today.

JH, The Works, vol. 3, p. 549.

Sir Robert Drew, “John Hunter and the Army,” Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps 113, no. 1 (1967): 11.

JH, Case Books, pp. 274–275.

JH, The Works, vol. 3, pp. 549–550; JH, Case Books, p. 275.

JH, The Works, vol. 3, p. 555.

Ibid., pp. 574–575.

JH to William Hunter, March 23, 1762, published in the Medical Times and Gazette (1867), p. 516. This letter refers to his appointment as director of the hospital, the titles he was awarded, and his need to keep a horse for the job.

JH to William Hunter, July 11, 1761, HBC, vol. 2, p. 14.

JH to William Hunter, July 11, 1761, HBC, vol. 2, p. 14; and September 14 and 28, 1761, HBC, vol. 2, p. 18.

C. Helen Brock, Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter 1740–83 (Cambridge: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 1996), p. 23.

Alexandre Dumas, The Man in the Iron Mask (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 517. Porthos dies in Belle-Ile after the island is attacked by Louis XIV’s forces.

JH, The Works, vol. 3, p. 21; Richard Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy, Vol. 5 (London: RCS, 1840), p. 61.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 245.

Jessie Dobson, ed., Descriptive Catalogue of the Physiological Series in the Hunterian Museum (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1970), part 1, p. 265.

Details of Hunter’s time in Portugal are fully described in the Loudoun Papers (LP), a set of letters, records, and sick returns archived at the RCS Library. His spell in Portugal is also described in Gask, “John Hunter in the Campaign in Portugal,” pp. 640–667; Fenwick Beekman, “John Hunter in Portugal,” Annals of Medical History 8 (1936): 288–296; and Sir Robert Drew, “John Hunter and the Army.”

W. Young to Lord Loudoun, September 8, 1762, LP, ms. 86.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. 293.

JH, Observations and Reflections on Geology, p. xvi.

R. Craig, “Gunshot Wounds Then and Now: How Did John Hunter Get Away with It?” in Papers Presented at the Hunterian Bicentenary Commemorative Meeting (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1995), pp. 15–19. Craig describes the three gunshot-wound specimens with impressions of French musket balls. JH, “A Copy of the Oldest Portion of Catalogue, in Mr Hunter’s Own Handwriting,” n.d., ms. 49 e 53, RCS. Hunter lists fifty specimens of lizards and the soldier’s intestine.

7. The Chimney Sweep’s Teeth

Anne S. Hargreaves, White as Whales Bone: Dental Services in Early Modern England (Leeds: W. S. Maney and Son, Ltd., 1998), p. 9 (citing the duchess of Northumberland describing George III) and p. 11 (citing Horace Walpole describing the duke of Newcastle).

Details about the history of dentistry can be found in Hargreaves, White as Whales Bone; Malvin E. Ring, Dentistry: An Illustrated History (New York: Abrams, 1985); and John Woodforde, The Strange Story of False Teeth (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968).

James Woodforde, The Diary of a Country Parson, ed. J. Beresford (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981), vol. 1, p. 183.

Smollett mentions the disagreement in a letter to William: Tobias Smollett to William Hunter, June 14, 1763, HBC, vol. 1, p. 91.

C. Helen Brock, “The Happiness of Riches,” in William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, ed. William Bynum and Roy Porter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 41. Brock says William’s bank account shows several payments to John.

Jessie Dobson, John Hunter, p. 108. Hunter gave his address as Covent Garden in June 1765, when purchasing land at Earls Court, so it is reasonable to assume he had settled there on returning from Portugal. Foot states that Hunter embarked on dentistry in an alliance with James Spence at this time, and Hunter himself refers to working with Spence in his treatise on teeth, although he does not give the dates. Jessé Foot, The Life, p. 132.

Foot, The Life, p. 131.

Sidney Lee and Leslie Stephen, eds., Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1908–1909), vol. 7, pp. 367–368; Foot, The Life, pp. 133–134.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 108.

Ibid., p. 104.

The specimen showing a human tooth transplanted into a cock’s comb is P 56 in the Hunterian Museum. The cockerel’s testicle in the hen’s abdomen is P 53.

Sir Roy Calne, “Replacement Surgery and Transplantation,” in Papers Presented at the Hunterian Bicentenary Commemorative Meeting (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1995), pp. 12–14.

Dr. William Irvine to Professor Thomas Hamilton, June 17, 1771, cited in “The Hunters and the Hamiltons: Some Unpublished Letters,” The Lancet, 214 (1928): 354–360.

John Woodforde, The Strange Story of False Teeth, p. 24.

Henry W. Noble, “Tooth Transplantation: A Controversial Story,” shortened version of a lecture given to the Scottish Society for the History of Medicine, June 15, 2002, available on the History of Dentistry Research Group’s Web site: www.rcpsglasg.ac.uk/hdrg/home.htm. The examples of earlier tooth transplants are related here.

Thomas Rowlandson, Transplanting of Teeth, published 1790. For a discussion of Rowlandson’s cartoon, see Fiona Haslam, From Hogarth to Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), pp. 252–253; Ruth Richardson, “Transplanting Teeth: Reflections on Thomas Rowlandson’s Transplanting Teeth,” The Lancet 354 (1999): 1740. The dentist depicted was Bartholomew Ruspini, a disciple of Hunter’s who practiced in England from the 1750s onward; see J. Menzies Campbell, Dentistry Then and Now (Glasgow: Pickering and Inglis, 1963), p. 64.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 100.

Thomas Bell, who edited Hunter’s treatise on teeth in The Works, called tooth transplanting Hunter’s favorite operation. Ibid., p. 104, note by Bell, lecturer in comparative anatomy at Guy’s Hospital, writing in 1835. Hunter only referred to the practice on a handful of occasions, although examples are also mentioned in case studies by others.

Noble, “Tooth Transplantation.”

John Woodforde, The Strange Story of False Teeth, p. 84.

Ibid., p. 81.

Thomas Berdmore, A Treatise on the Disorders and Deformities of the Teeth and Gums (London: privately printed, 1768), p. 102.

William Rae, “Lectures on the Teeth,” British Journal of Dental Science (1857): 517–521, taken from a verbatim manuscript note of lectures beginning April 12, 1782, by Mr. Tomes. See also Christine Hillam, “New Notes on the Lectures of William Rae,” Dental Historian 33 (1998): 50–72.

JH to William Cullen, September 24, 1777, transcript of letter, ms. Cullen 204, Glasgow University Library, Special Collections.

Thanks for his advice to Bob Corfield of the UK Transplant Authority.

Hunter’s contribution to dentistry is discussed in Jerry J. Herschfeld, “John Hunter and His Practical Treatise on Diseases of the Teeth,” Bulletin of the History of Dentistry 29, no. 1: 32–36; Campbell, Dentistry Then and Now, pp. 88–106; Irwin D. Mandel, “Revisiting John Hunter,” Journal of the History of Dentistry 48, no. 2: 57–60; and David E. Poswillo, “John Hunter’s Contribution to Dentistry,” Dental Historian 38 (2001): 13–17. Many thanks to Malcolm Bishop, dental surgeon, for his help in explaining Hunter’s contribution to dentistry and its significance today. My thanks also to the American Dental Association.

8. The Debutante’s Spots

John Hadley, “An Account of a Mummy, Inspected at London 1763, in a Letter to William Heberden, MD FRS, from John Hadley, MD FRS,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 54 (1764): 1–14 (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1965).

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xviii. Home says Hunter taught practical anatomy and operational surgery for several winters at this time. His spell as an army surgeon gave him an automatic right to practice on his return to civilian life.

The casebooks detail numerous dissections in the winter of 1763–1764.

Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind (London: HarperCollins, 1997), pp. 263–264. The gradual acceptance of postmortems in Georgian society and Hunter’s role in this trend have been described by Simon Chaplin in a lecture, “ ‘An Excellent Hand for the Business’: John Hunter and the Art of Dissection in Johnson’s London,” given at Dr. Johnson’s house, London, November 20, 2003.

John Abernethy, Hunterian Oration (1819), in Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), pp. 40–41.

Sidney Lee and Leslie Stephen, eds., Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 3, p. 584; Jessie Dobson, “John Hunter and the Byron Family,” Journal of the History of Medicine 10 (1955): 333–335. The case is recorded in JH, Case Books, pp. 213, 347.

JH, Case Books, p. 332.

Ibid., pp. 356–357.

Biographical details about Anne Home Hunter can be found in Aileen K. Adams, “ ‘I Am Happy in a Wife’: A Study of Mrs John Hunter (1742–1821),” in Papers Presented at the Hunterian Bicentenary Commemorative Meeting (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1995), pp. 32–37; Jane M. Oppenheimer, “Anne Home Hunter and Her Friends,” Journal of the History of Medicine 1 (1946): 434–445; and Sir Arthur Porritt, “John Hunter’s Women,” Transactions of the Hunterian Society 17 (1958–1959): 81–111. Anne had at least two sisters.

Reminiscences of Mrs. John Hunter by her great-niece, Mrs. E. Milligan, in 1866, HBC, vol. 2, p. 58; Professor William Hamilton to his father, December 25, 1777, cited in “The Hunters and the Hamiltons: Some Unpublished Letters,” The Lancet, 214 (1928): 354–360.

Dr William Hunter by Allan Ramsay, c. 1765, Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow.

John Hunter FRS by Robert Home, c. 1770, Royal Society.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. 320.

John Hunter by Robert Home, c. 1775–1778, Royal College of Surgeons. An engraving taken from this painting by H. Cook (at the Royal Society) dates the painting c. 1765 and also shows the mummy more clearly.

Jessie Dobson, “Some of John Hunter’s Patients,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 42 (1968): 124–133.

Jessé Foot, The Life, p. 240.

Dobson, John Hunter, pp. 114–115.

George C. Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 144–145. Peachy cites the details of Hunter’s purchase of land at Earls Court. W. W. Hutchings, London Town—Past and Present (London: Cassell, 1909), p. 674. Hutchings refers to Hunter living at 31 Golden Square. A blue plaque denotes the house.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 131–155. The experiments were first related in two papers to the Royal Society, “Experiments on Animals and Vegetables with Respect of the Power of Producing Heat,” read June 22, 1775, and “On the Heat etc of Animals and Vegetables,” read June 19, and November 13, 1777.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 284.

JH, Case Books, p. 233.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 512.

JH, Case Books, p. 233. Two specimens of dogs’ tendons survive as P 109 and P 110, Hunterian Museum, RCS.

JH, “A Copy of the Oldest Portion of Catalogue, in Mr Hunter’s Own Handwriting,” n.d., ms. 49 e 53, RCS.

Museum notes, Hunterian Museum, RCS.

JH, “The Modern History of the Absorbing System,” n.d., ms. 49 e 5, RCS. These notes, in the handwriting of Hunter’s later assistant and brother-in-law Everard Home, were apparently part of an original catalog to Hunter’s collection.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 394–397, paper first published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 56 (1767): 307–310; JH, “General Observations on the Pnumobrankes,” miscellaneous papers, n.d., ms. 49 d 11, RCS.

Royal Society Journal Book Copy, vol. 26, 1767–1770, February 5, 1767 (no page numbers).

William was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on April 30, 1767.

There are two specimens showing the heart of the greater siren in the Hunterian Museum, 912 and 913.

9. The Surgeon’s Penis

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 417. A Treatise on the Venereal Disease was first published in 1786.

Scholars and disciples have argued for decades over whether Hunter inoculated himself or an anonymous victim. Hunter obscured the identity of the subject throughout, but evidence shows quite plainly that it was himself. Two sets of pupils’ lecture notes quote Hunter stating that “I have produced in myself a Chancre.” See JH, “Lectures on the Principles of Surgery by John Hunter 1787,” transcription of notes by Mr. Twigge, n.d., ms. 49 e 28, p. 390, RCS; and Philip J. Weimerskirch and Goetz W. Richter, “Hunter and Venereal Disease,” The Lancet 313 (1979): 503–504, citing notes in the Edward G. Miner Library of the University of Rochester Medical Center, New York: JH, “Lectures on Venereal Diseases,” ms. c. 1800. When Hunter’s Works were first published in 1835, the editor of the treatise on venereal disease, George Babington, stated categorically that Hunter had performed the experiment on himself. Hunter’s biographer in The Works, Drewry Ottley, even recorded Hunter joking about his self-experiment during his lectures. See JH, The Works, vol. 2, pp. 146–147; Ottley, “The Life,” p. 47. It is highly unlikely, despite what Hunter’s devotees have suggested, that he performed the experiment on a hospital or private patient or managed to procure a volunteer who lived in his house. In May 1767, he had no hospital patients on which to practice, and he would have been extremely foolish to risk such a reckless experiment on a private patient during his early career. It is implausible that he procured a volunteer he could monitor daily for the three-year duration of the experiment. The counterargument—that Hunter did not experiment on himself— can be found in W. J. Dempster, “Towards a New Understanding of John Hunter,” The Lancet 1 (1978): 316–318; George Qvist, “John Hunter’s Alleged Syphilis,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 59 (1977): 205–209; George Qvist, “Some Controversial Aspects of John Hunter’s Life and Work,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 61 (1979): 138–141; and George Qvist, John Hunter 1728–1793, pp. 47–50.

James Boswell, Boswell’s London Journal, 1762–1763, ed. Frederick A. Pottle (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 83–84 (entry for December 14, 1762).

Harris’s List of Covent-Garden Ladies, or Man of Pleasure’s Kalendar for the Year 1779, from excerpts at Dr. Johnson’s House, Gough Square, London.

Derek Parker, Casanova (Stroud, England: Sutton Publishing, 2003), pp. 156–164.

William B. Ober, Boswell’s Clap and Other Essays: Medical Analyses of Literary Men’s Afflictions (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1979), pp. 1–42.

Boswell, Boswell’s London Journal, p. 139 (entry for January 12, 1763).

Ibid., p. 156 (entry for January 20, 1763).

Ibid., p. 227 (entry for March 25, 1763). Contemporary condoms are described in Sheila O’Connell, London 1753 (London: British Museum Press, 2003), p. 144, catalog to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the British Museum, May 23 to November 23, 2003.

Descriptive Catalogue of the Pathological Series in the Hunterian Museum, vol. 1 (London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1966), p. 15 (describes the penis as specimen P 30); A Guide to the Hunterian Museum, bicentenary ed. (London: Royal College of Surgeons, 1993), p. 21 (details the bone and skull specimens, series P 714 to 746).

JH, Case Books. The cases cited below are on pp. 267, 266, and 269, respectively. Hunter gives no dates for his consultations with his venereal patients.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 387. The case referred to happened in 1782.

Boswell, Boswell’s London Journal, p. 156 (entry for January 20, 1763).

Information on the history of venereal disease is given in Claude Quétel, History of Syphilis (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990); William Bynum, “Treating the Wages of Sin: Venereal Disease and Specialism in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in Medical Fringe and Medical Orthodoxy 1750–1850, ed. William Bynum and Roy Porter (London, Sydney, and Wolfeboro, NH: Croom Helm, c. 1987), pp. 5–28; and Allan M. Brandt, “Sexually Transmitted Diseases,” in Companion Encyclopedia of the History of Medicine, ed. William Bynum and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 562–584. I am grateful for the advice of Dr. Michael Waugh, consultant genito-urinary physician at Leeds General Infirmary, on the nature and treatment of venereal diseases.

Bynum, “Treating the Wages of Sin,” pp. 8–9.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 187.

Ibid., p. 190.

Ibid., pp. 163–164.

Ibid., p. 193. This excerpt also describes the bread-pills test.

Lord Holland [Henry Richard Vassall Fox], Further Memoirs of the Whig Party 1807–1821 (London: John Murray, 1905), pp. 343–344.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 425.

JH, Case Books, p. 259.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, pp. 417–419. As Hunter’s comments show, it is not true, despite what some of Hunter’s defenders have argued, that he described the subject in the third person. Neither did he always describe his own health in the first person. Writing about his own angina in The Works, vol. 3, p. 150, he begins by saying, “A gentleman was attacked with a pain in the situation of the pylorus,” then continues in the same vein.

Deborah Hayden, Pox: Genius, Madness and the Mysteries of Syphilis (New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 29–31; Diane Beyer Perett, Ethics and Error: The Dispute Between Ricord and Auzias-Turenne over Syphilization 1845–70 (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1977), pp. 13–29.

John Sheldon, The History of the Absorbent System (London: privately printed, 1784), p. 31. Sheldon states that Hunter “informed me that he had fed himself with madder” and that it had turned his urine red.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth Esq (London: R. Hunter, 1820), vol. 1, pp. 190–191. The circumstances are described more fully in Chapter 12.

Benjamin Bell, A Treatise on Gonorrhoea Virulenta, and Lues Venerea (Edinburgh: James Watson and Co., 1793).

Joseph Adams, Memoirs, p. 235.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, p. 123.

H. Clutterbuck to Joseph Adams, 1799, ms. 27 c 5, p. 18, RCS. Clutterbuck complained that Hunter’s views led to reduced use of mercury.

Ober, Boswell’s Clap and Other Essays, p. 23.

JH, The Works, vol. 2, pp. 304–307.

Ibid., pp. 307–308.

The explanation is given by the artist Joseph Farington: Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, ed. J. Greig (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1922–1928), vol. 3, p. 660 (entry for September 13, 1796).

Foot referred to an instance where he treated a patient in consultation with Hunter. See Jessé Foot, Observations Upon the New Opinions of John Hunter in His Late Treatise on the Venereal Disease (London: T. Becket, 1786), in three parts, p. 28, RCS. He said he called for a syllabus for Hunter’s lectures in 1773; see Foot, The Life, p. 243.

Foot, Observations, pp. 90, 110.

Charles Brandon Trye, A Review of Jesse Foote’s Observations on the New Opinions of John Hunter in His Late Treatise on the Venereal Disease (London: John Murray, 1788), pp. 55, 1, 57.

JH to Charles Brandon Trye, February 24, (no year), copy of letter, Hunterian Society Catalogue, ms. 5610, 29/5, WL.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 22. The remark was found on a scrap of paper among Hunter’s manuscripts after his death.

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xx. Home suggests Hunter set up the group shortly after joining the RS, although Joseph Adams later argued it was unlikely such a novice member could have organized the club so soon. However, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (see next note) confirmed that the club did begin in the late 1760s. Edgeworth said that the club met at Young Slaughter’s.

Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth Esq, vol. 1, pp. 188–189; Jenny Uglow, The Lunar Men (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), pp. 124–125.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 461–463.

Everard Home, “An Account of a Hermaphrodite Dog,” first read to the Royal Society on March 7, 1799, tracts RCS. In this paper, Home referred to Hunter’s successful experiment in artificial insemination, although he did not give a date. The experiment is discussed in Brian Cook, Contributions of the Hunter Brothers to Our Understanding of Reproduction: An Exhibition from the University Library’s Collections (leaflet, Glasgow University Library, Special Collections Department, 1992).

C. Helen Brock, Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter 1740–83 (Cambridge: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 1996), p. 39.

C. Helen Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783: A Memoir by Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1983), p. 59.

William Wadd, Mems. Maxims and Memoirs (London: Callow and Wilson, 1827), p. 283.

William Hunter, “Observations on the Bones, Commonly Supposed to Be Elephants Bones, Which Have Been Found Near the River Ohio in America,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 58 (1768): 34–45 (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1965).

Company of Surgeons Examination Book, 1745–1800 (entry for July 7, 1768), facsimile at RCS.

10. The Kangaroo’s Skull

Details of the Endeavour’s voyage are taken from a variety of sources, principally Ernest Rhys, ed., The Voyages of Captain Cook (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd., 1999), which is based on Cook’s journals; J. C. Beaglehole, The Life of Captain James Cook (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1974); and Patrick O’Brian, Joseph Banks (London: Harvill Press, 1997).

Ray Desmond, Kew: The History of the Royal Botanic Gardens (London: Harvill Press, 1995), p. 87. Desmond cites the letter from J. Ellis to C. Linnaeus, August 19, 1768.

Information about London’s animal collections is taken from Julia Allen, Samuel Johnson’s Menagerie (Norwich: Erskine Press, 2002); Geoffrey Parnell, The Royal Menagerie at the Tower of London (pamphlet, Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds, 1999); and Daniel Hahn, The Tower Menagerie (London: Simon and Schuster, 2003). My thanks for further information to Geoffrey Parnell of the Royal Armouries Library.

An Historical Account of the Curiosities of London and Westminster (London: J. Newbury, 1767), pp. 12–27, copy at the BL.

Jessie Dobson, “John Hunter’s Animals,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 17 (1962): 379–486.

Richard D. Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1978), p. 35.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” p. 30. Castle Street was later renamed Charing Cross Road.

Julia Allen, Samuel Johnson’s Menagerie, p. 15.

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxxi.

Details of Hunter’s Earls Court home, known as Earl’s Court House, are taken from contemporary news cuttings in the HA. It was demolished in 1886.

“John Hunter at Earl’s Court, Kensington 1764–93,” leaflet reprinted from the Atheneum of 1870, p. 5, HA.

Laszlo A. Magyar, John Hunter and John Dolittle at www.geocities.com/tapir32hu/hunter.htm. This theory is supported, I believe, by a letter from Hunter when asked for his view by Edward Jenner on a patient. In typical conservative style, his reply was, “I believe the best thing you can do is to do little,” see JH, Letters from the Past, p. 10.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 125.

JH, miscellaneous notes and extracts, n.d., ms. 49 e 19, RCS.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 422–466.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. xix.

Jessie Dobson, “The Hunter Specimens at Kew Observatory,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 8 (1951): pp. 457–462.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxxviii.

Andrew Cunningham, “The Pen and the Sword: Recovering the Disciplinary Identity of Physiology and Anatomy Before 1800, II: Old Anatomy—the Sword,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 34 (2003): pp. 51–76.

The work of Buffon, Daubenton, and others is described in Charles Coulston Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), various entries; John Gribben, Science: A History 1543–2001 (London: Allen Lane, 2002), pp. 221–229; F. J. Cole, A History of Comparative Anatomy from Aristotle to the Eighteenth Century (London: Macmillan, 1944), p. 20 and appendix. For a comprehensive discussion of the pursuit of comparative anatomy, see Andrew Cunningham, The Anatomist Anatomis’d: an Experimental Discipline in Eighteenth-Century Europe (due to be published in 2005).

Stephen J. Cross, “John Hunter, the Animal Oeconomy, and Late Eighteenth-Century Physiological Discourse,” Studies in the History of Biology 5 (1981): 1–110. Cross provides a good explanation of Hunter’s purpose.

JH, miscellaneous notes and extracts, n.d., ms. 49 e 19, RCS.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 292–298.

JH, miscellaneous notes and extracts, n.d., ms. 49 e 19, RCS.

Hunter’s arrangement can be discerned from his earliest catalog: JH, “A Copy of the Oldest Portion of Catalogue, in Mr Hunter’s Own Handwriting,” n.d., ms. 49 e 53, RCS.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 107.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 331–392. This paper, entitled “Observations on the Structure and Oeconomy of Whales,” was first published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1787. Hunter’s research is cited in Herman Melville, Moby-Dick (London: Penguin, 1972), p. 85. Melville’s novel was first published in England as The Whale in 1851.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 52.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 131–155.

Ibid., pp. 315–318; Jessie Dobson, ed., Descriptive Catalogue of the Physiological Series in the Hunterian Museum (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1970), pp. 8–12. The bone-growth experiments are also discussed in G. Bentley, “John Hunter’s Studies of the Musculoskeletal System,” in Papers Presented at the Hunterian Bicentenary Commemorative Meeting (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1995), pp. 20–25.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 194. Hunter’s observations were cited in Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, ed. Richard Dawkins (London: Gibson Square Books, 2003), p. 540.

JH, The Works, Atlas, p. 18. The six sparrows are still in a perfect state in the Hunterian Museum, specimens 2457–2462.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 28.

David Morris, “John Hunter—Myth or Legend?,” Hunterian Society Transactions (1974–1976): 43–55.

Jessie Dobson, John Hunter, p. 113.

Jane M. Oppenheimer, “John and William Hunter and Some Contemporaries,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 23 (1949): 41–42.

The cesarean operation is described by William Cooper, the physician initially called in by the midwife, and by Henry Thomson, the surgeon who performed the operation, in Medical Observations and Inquiries 4 (1771): 261–271 and 272–279.

J. H. Young, The History of the Caesarean Section (London: H. K. Lewis and Co. Ltd., 1944), pp. 1–54.

William Hunter, ms. notes H 56, August 13, 1774, Glasgow University Library, Special Collections; William Cooper, “An Account of the Caesarean Operation,” Medical Observations and Inquiries 5 (1776): 217–232. The second operation, in which Hunter was assisted by James Patch, a former pupil from the Covent Garden school, took place on August 13, 1774.

Otto Sonntag, ed., John Pringle’s Correspondence with Albrecht von Haller (Basel: Schwabe, 1999), pp. 135–136 (letter from Pringle to Haller, April 3, 1770); JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 81–121; JH, Case Books, pp. 374–375.

JH, “On the Digestion of the Stomach After Death,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 62 (1772): 447–454 (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1965). The youth’s stomach is specimen 592 in the Hunterian Museum; a similar preparation of a human stomach destroyed by gastric acid after death, dating from about 1755, is specimen 591.

JH, Case Books, pp. 370–371.

Martin Myrone, George Stubbs (London: Tate Publishing, 2002), p. 46.

William Hunter, “An Account of the Nyl-ghau, an Indian Animal, Not Hitherto Described,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 61 (1771): 170–181 (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1965). John’s observations are also recorded in JH, “Note on Teeth and Colon of Nyl-ghau and Goat,” n.d., ms. H 147, Glasgow University Library, Special Collections. The nilgai skeleton is specimen RC-SHC/CO 1347 in the Hunterian Museum.

Sonntag, ed., John Pringle’s Correspondence with Albrecht von Haller, p. 165 (letter from Pringle to Haller, June 13, 1771).

For details on Jenner’s life, see Richard B. Fisher, Edward Jenner 1749–1823 (London: André Deutsch, 1991); and John Baron, The Life of Edward Jenner (London: Henry Colburn, 1827).

Jenner’s vaccine, using a small dose of cowpox to protect against the deadly and disfiguring smallpox, eventually led to the complete eradication of the disease, as declared by the World Health Organization in 1979.

Harold B. Carter, Sir Joseph Banks 1743–1820 (London: British Museum [Natural History], 1988), pp. 95–96.

It is difficult to identify the animals Hunter obtained from Cook’s first voyage, since records are incomplete. There are numerous antipodean animals in the Hunterian Museum, but it is not always clear whether they were brought back on Cook’s first voyage or by later explorers, such as John White, who donated many animals to Hunter after his journey to New South Wales in 1788. For animals named in the text see the following. Sea pen: (museum preparation 2925); sharks’ eggs and eels: Richard Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy, vol. 5 (London: RCS, 1840), p. 61; mole rat and zorilla: JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 2, pp. 235–236, 69–70; giant squid: museum preparation 308.

Carter, Sir Joseph Banks 1743–1820, pp. 89–91; Joseph Banks, The Endeavour Journal of Joseph Banks 1768–1771, ed. J. C. Beaglehole (Sydney: Trustees of the Public Library of New South Wales in association with Angus and Robertson, 1962), vol. 2, pp. 93–94.

Much debate has centered on the identity of the kangaroos seen by Banks and Cook. T. C. S. Morrison-Scott and F. C. Sawyer argue convincingly that the skull given to Hunter came from a great gray kangaroo, most probably the second one shot by Gore, based on a photograph of the skull; see Morrison-Scott and Sawyer, “The Identity of Captain Cook’s Kangaroo,” Bulletin of British Museum (Natural History) 1 (1950): 45–50. Hunter says Banks gave him a skull from Cook’s first voyage; see JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. 485. Hunter’s description of the teeth is from the same source. The skull was destroyed in 1941, during World War II. Many thanks to the staff of the Natural History Museum for help.

John White, Journal of a Voyage to New South Wales, ed. A. Chisholm (Sydney and London: Angus and Robertson, 1962; first published 1790).

Dr. William Irvine to Professor Thomas Hamilton, June 17, 1771, cited in “The Hunters and the Hamiltons: Some Unpublished Letters,” The Lancet 214 (1928): 354–360. Irvine states that Hunter received two hundred pounds for his treatise on teeth.

JH to William Hunter, Saturday [sic] evening, n.d. (July 21, 1771), HBC, vol. 2, p. 10. The day was, in fact, Sunday.

Copy of Register of Marriage at St. James’s Westminster, 1771, p. 21, HA.

John Kobler, The Reluctant Surgeon, p. 157. Kobler states that Cook and Banks attended the wedding, but without any reference. The story of the travelers presenting hickory-wood logs to the couple is contained in a curious pamphlet by DRAGM (believed to be a pseudonym for Robert Anstruther Goodsir), Only an Old Chair (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1884).

Tobias Smollett, The Letters of Tobias Smollett, ed. Lewis M. Knapp (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970), p. 140 (letter from Smollett to Hunter, January 9, 1771); Jeremy Lewis, Tobias Smollett (London: Jonathan Cape, 2003), pp. 270, 278–279. Other writers have suggested Smollett promised his corpse to William Hunter, but Knapp, who is regarded as the authority on the writer, and Lewis, his most recent biographer, both state his offer was made to John. The letter extract has no addressee.

11. The Electric Eel’s Peculiar Organs

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxii.

John Baron, The Life of Edward Jenner (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), p. 10 (Baron says Jenner called Hunter “the dear man”); Jessie Dobson, William Clift FRS (London: William Heinemann, 1954), p. 109 (Clift says Lynn called Hunter “Glorious John”).

For details about Anne Hunter and her literary contributions, see Janet Todd, ed., A Dictionary of British and American Women Writers (London: Methuen and Co., 1987), pp. 169–170; Aileen K. Adams, “ ‘I Am Happy in a Wife’: A Study of Mrs John Hunter (1742–1821),” in Papers presented at the Hunterian Bicentenary Commemorative Meeting (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1995), pp. 32–37.

J Dobson, William Clift FRS, p. 109.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” p. 41. William Clift, Hunter’s last assistant, threw doubt on this tale, but a remark in a 1787 newspaper declaring that “Mrs Hunter’s poetry is banished” from Hunter’s house may well be a reference to the incident; see Morning Herald, April 13, 1787, p. 14, HA.

Hester Thrale, Thraliana: The Diary of Mrs Hester Lynch Thrale 1776–1809, ed. Katherine C. Balderston (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), vol. 1, p. 67.

Lord Holland [Henry Richard Vassall Fox], Further Memoirs of the Whig Party 1807–1821 (London: John Murray, 1905), p. 345.

Kensington Express, February 20, 1886, cutting appears on page 9 in the HA.

James Beattie, James Beattie’s London Diary, ed. Ralph C. Walker (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1946), p. 40 (entry for May 25, 1773). Beattie visited in May 1773.

George Cartwright, A Journal of Transactions and Events, during a Residence of Nearly Sixteen Years on the Coast of Labrador (Newark, Nottinghamshire: Allin and Ridge, 1792), vol. 1, p. 271; Anthony A. Pearson, “John Hunter and the Woman from Labrador,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 60 (1978): 7–13. The portraits are in the Hunter drawing books at the RCS. The Inuit family visited in early 1773.

These figures are cited by John Gunning, William Walker, and Thomas Keate (Hunter’s enemies at St. George’s) in a letter to the governors, n.d. (1793), printed verbatim in George C. Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 282–296. Figures for the fees are quoted in JH, letter to his colleagues, July 9, 1792, cited in Peachey, A Memoir, p. 272.

JH, letter to the governors, February 28, 1793, cited in Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 275–282.

Hunter states that he began lecturing privately, inviting pupils from St. George’s free of charge, in 1772 both in his lecture notes and in an article, which he sanctioned, in the European Magazine. JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 210; article from European Magazine in 1782, reprinted in John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), pp. 341–352. There has been debate about when Hunter opened his lectures to all comers, with different biographers giving 1773 or 1774 as the year, but Peachey makes a convincing case for 1775, when the earliest-known advertisement was placed; see Peachey, A Memoir, p. 162. The European Magazine article refers to Hunter lecturing privately in 1772, 1773, and 1774. Further evidence for the lectures not being given publicly until after 1774 is given in a paper signed by Hunter in May 1774, certifying that a pupil attended lectures “which I gave several of the pupils of St George’s hospital,” ms. 49 e 59, RCS.

Jessé Foot, The Life, pp. 243–244.

Letter from John Gunning, William Walker, and Thomas Keate to the governors, n.d. (1793), in Peachey, A Memoir, p. 289.

Henry Cline, Hunterian Oration at the RCS, 1824.

Article from European Magazine in 1782, reprinted in Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, pp. 341–352.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 208. Hunter’s idea of educating medical students so that they can educate themselves has been revived only recently by the United Kingdom’s General Medical Council.

Joseph Adams, Memoirs, p. 75.

George Macilwain, Memoirs of John Abernethy (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1854), vol. 1, p. 253.

Foot, The Life, p. 245.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 48.

Ibid.

Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, p. 6; Adams, Memoirs, p. 73.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 208.

The contents of Hunter’s lectures are taken from JH, “Lectures on the Principles of Surgery,” in The Works, vol. 1, unless otherwise specified. These are transcribed from shorthand notes taken by Nathaniel Rumsey in 1786 and 1787, although they follow very much the pattern of notes taken by other pupils at various times.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 20.

Ibid., pp. 625–628.

The two quotes regarding Hunter’s errors are from Ibid., p. 495, and from Stephen Jacyna, “Physiological Principles in the Surgical Writings of John Hunter,” in Medical Theory, Surgical Practice, ed. Christopher Lawrence (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 145, citing notes of Hunter’s lectures, ms. 49 e 23, RCS.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 406.

Ibid., p. 405.

Mary Coke, The Letters and Journals of Lady Mary Coke, ed. J. A. Home (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1889–1896), vol. 4, p. 102 (entry for July 23, 1772).

Jacyna, “Physiological Principles in the Surgical Writings of John Hunter,” citing JH, “Surgical Lectures,” notes at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, ms. M8 47, pp. 208–209.

Sir D’Arcy Power, Hunterian Oration 1925 (Bristol: John Wright and Sons Ltd., 1925), p. 9.

William Clift, relating details told to him by Henry Cline, in a note on the inside cover of JH, “Lectures on the Principles of Surgery,” notes taken by Hopkinson, probably between 1781 and 1785, ms. RCS. Cline attended in 1774 or 1775.

R. C. Brock, The Life and Work of Astley Cooper (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1952), p. 145.

Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, p. 126 (introductory lecture, 1815).

Sir Arthur Porritt, “John Hunter: Distant Echoes,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 41 (1967): 10.

Foot, The Life, p. 280.

Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, p. 199.

JH, Letters from the Past, p. 10. The booklet reprints thirty-three of Hunter’s letters. There are known to be fifty-one in all, of which thirty-two are kept at the library of the RCS. Others are also given in Baron, The Life of Edward Jenner. Many are undated. The letters quoted here are cited in the RCS booklet.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 36.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. lxv.

Foot, The Life, p. 250; Lord Holland [Henry Richard Vassall Fox], Further Memoirs of the Whig Party 1807–1821, pp. 341–342.

Dobson, William Clift FRS, p. 11.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 244.

F. Dudley Hart, “William Heberden, Edward Jenner, John Hunter and Angina Pectoris,” Journal of Medical Biography 3 (1995): 56–58.

The poem, entitled “To the Memory of a Lovely Infant,” was published in Anne Hunter, Poems (London: T. Payne, 1802).

Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography and Other Writings (New York, Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 1986), pp. 214–215.

Fiona Haslam, From Hogarth to Rowlandson: Medicine in Art in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), pp. 196–198.

Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand, Daniel Solander, Collected Correspondence 1753–82 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995), pp. 340–341 (letter from Solander to Ellis, November 7, 1774). More details on Walsh and his electric fish experiments can be found in Marco Piccolino and Marco Bresadola, “Drawing a Spark from Darkness: John Walsh and Electric Fish,” Trends in Neurosciences 25 (2002): 51–57.

JH, “Anatomical Observations on the Torpedo,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 63 (1773): 481–489 (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1965). Several preparations of the electric organs of the torpedo fish survive in Hunter’s museum as specimens 2168–2179.

Duyker and Tingbrand, Daniel Solander, Collected Correspondence 1753–82, pp. 342–343 (letter from Solander to Banks, November 10, 1774).

JH, “An Account of the Gymnotus Electricus,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society 65 (1775): 395–407 (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1965). The specimens are 2185 and 2186 in the Hunterian Museum.

Otto Sonntag, ed., John Pringle’s Correspondence with Albrecht von Haller (Basel: Schwabe, 1999), pp. 348–349 (letter from Pringle to Haller, December 13, 1776).

Duyker and Tingbrand, Daniel Solander, Collected Correspondence 1753–82, pp. 354–355 (letter from Solander to Banks, August 14, 1775).

JH to the Reverend James Baillie, November 23, 1775, HBC, vol. 7, p. 17.

Dobson, William Clift FRS, p. 13, citing Clift’s description of Hunter’s new coach.

David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, ed. J. Greig (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932), vol. 2, pp. 324–325 (letter from Hume to his brother John Home [Hume], June 10, 1776).

William Hickey, Memoirs of William Hickey, ed. A. Spencer (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1913), vol. 2, pp. 86–87.

James Perry, The Torpedo: A Poem to the Electric Eel, 1777, RCS.

12. The Chaplain’s Neck

Details of Dodd’s life and even more famous death are taken principally from Jessie Dobson, “John Hunter and the Unfortunate Doctor Dodd,” Journal of the History of Medicine 10 (1955): 369–378; Rev. W. Foster, Samuel Johnson and the Dodd Affair (Lichfield: Johnson Society, 1951); and accounts in Gentleman’s Magazine, as cited hereafter.

Gentleman’s Magazine, 47 (1777), pp. 293–294.

Early nineteenth-century records reveal that out of thirty-six-bodies dissected after hanging between 1812 and 1830, the heart was still beating in ten, although the dissection still went ahead. See Jessie Dobson, “Cardiac Action after ‘Death’ by Hanging,” Lancet 261 (1951): 1222–1224. The Greene and Duell cases are from Peter Linebaugh, “The Tyburn Riot Against the Surgeons,” in Albion’s Fatal Tree: Crime and Society in Eighteenth-Century England, ed. Douglas Hay (London: Allen Lane, 1975), p. 103.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. 153. The rabbit’s ear experiment is on p. 152.

P. J. Bishop, A Short History of the Royal Humane Society (London: RHS, 1974). I am grateful for the help of Janet Smith at the RHS.

JH, “Proposals for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned,” read to the Royal Society on March 21, 1776; in The Works, vol. 4, pp. 165–175.

D. Duda, L. Brandt, and M. El Gindi, “The History of Defibrillation,” in The History of Anaesthesia: Proceedings of the Second International Symposium on the History of Anaesthesia Held in London 20–23 April 1987, ed. R. Atkinson and T. Boulton (London and New York: Royal Society of Medicine, 1987), pp. 464–468. I am grateful to Peter Baskett, retired anesthetist and editor of the journal Resuscitation, and John Zorab, retired consultant anesthetist, for advice on this topic.

Gentleman’s Magazine, 47 (1777), p. 346.

Dobson, “John Hunter and the Unfortunate Doctor Dodd,” citing the London Review of English and Foreign Literature of September 1777.

Gentleman’s Magazine, 60 (1790), pp. 1010, 1066, 1077–1078.

Dobson, “John Hunter and the Unfortunate Doctor Dodd,” citing the Aberdeen Journal, August 19, 1794.

Ibid., citing a letter from Charles Hutton in Newcastle Magazine, March 1822. Hutton related the tale only after all the participants in the story were dead.

JH, Hunterian Reminiscences, Being the Substance of a Course of Lectures in the Principles and Practices of Surgery Delivered by Mr John Hunter in the Year 1785, Taken in Shorthand and Afterwards Fairly Transcribed by the Late Mr James Parkinson, ed. J. W. K. Parkinson (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1833), p. 149.

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxvii. Home refers to the episode in 1776, but it is understood to have been 1777.

“The Hunters and the Hamiltons, Some Unpublished Letters” The Lancet 214 (1928): 354–360. The article reprints several letters sent by William Hamilton to his father, Thomas Hamilton, in 1777–1778.

Sidney Lee and Leslie Stephen, eds., Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1908–1909), vol. 9, pp. 1121–1122. The experiments on venom are described by Home in miscellaneous manuscripts; see ms. 49 e 5, RCS, with reference to 1782.

Cutting from St James’s Chronicle, n.d. (1776), p. 10, HA.

Matthew Baillie, “A Short Memoir of My Life,” mss. Baillie, p. 7, RCS.

Jessé Foot, The Life, p. 250.

Royal Society Journal Book Copy, 1777–1780, vol. 29, pp. 573–584 (entry for January 27, 1780).

JH, “On the Structure of the Placenta,” Royal Society Letters and Papers 65 (1780): 138. The paper was later published in revised form in JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 60–71.

William Hunter to RS, February 3, 1780, Royal Society Letters and Papers 65 (1780): 138.

JH to Joseph Banks, February 17, 1780, Royal Society Letters and Papers 65 (1780): 140.

William Hunter, Two Introductory Lectures (London: printed by order of the trustees for J. Johnson, 1784), p. 64.

JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 214.

JH, miscellaneous notes and extracts, n.d., ms. 49 e 19, RCS.

C. Helen Brock, Calendar of the Correspondence of Dr William Hunter 1740–83 (Cambridge: Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine, 1996), pp. 75–76.

Ibid., p. 89.

C. Helen Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783: A Memoir by Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter (Glasgow: Glasgow University Press, 1983), p. 28.

Jessie Dobson, “John Hunter’s Giraffe,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 24 (1959): 124–128; Lee and Stephen, eds., Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 15, pp. 471–473.

John Hunter’s drawing books, RCS.

Foot, The Life, p. 246.

Edward Duyker and Per Tingbrand, Daniel Solander, Collected Correspondence 1753–82 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995), pp. 394–395 (letter from Solander to Banks, September 6, 1781). Hunter says he obtained the bottle-nosed whale in 1783 in the atlas accompanying “The Animal Oeconomy,” but he must be mistaken, for Solander refers to the same animal in his letter of 1781, while a newspaper cutting of the same year is plainly the same whale. JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 331–392; newspaper cutting (untitled and undated, but handwritten note says 1781), facing p. 14 in HA.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 331–392.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxii.

13. The Giant’s Bones

Sidney Lee and Leslie Stephen, eds., Dictionary of National Biography (London: Smith, Elder and Co., 1908–1909), vol. 3, p. 579.

Jessie Dobson, William Clift FRS (London: Heinemann, 1954), pp. 118– 119, citing research in the 1840s by a retired naval surgeon, Mr. Gough, in Ireland.

Sylas Neville, The Diary of Sylas Neville 1767–1788, ed. Basil Cozens-Hardy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1950), p. 290 (entry for February 22, 1782).

C. J. S. Thompson, The Mystery and Lore of Monsters (London: Williams and Norgate, 1930), pp. 63, 66.

Liza Picard, Dr Johnson’s London (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2000), p. 251. Thanks to Dr. James Munro for suggesting that the man covered with scales suffered from ichthyosis.

William Le Fanu, “Hunter’s Dwarfs,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 6 (1950): 446–449. The portrait Teresa, the Corsican Fairy was painted by William Hincks in 1774. Details of her subsequent death, after trying to deliver a normal-size child, were later added to Hunter’s casebooks; see JH, Case Books, pp. 477–478.

Details about the giants exhibited in London are from Edward J. Wood, Giants and Dwarfs (London: Bentley, 1868), passim.

Jan Bondeson, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 74.

Morning Herald, April 24, 1782, BL.

Ibid., April 30, 1782, BL.

London Chronicle, August 17–20, 1782, Guildhall Library.

Joseph Boruwlaski, Memoirs of the Celebrated Dwarf Joseph Boruwlaski, a Polish Gentleman (London, 1788), pp. 199–200; Wood, Giants and Dwarfs, pp. 330–343.

Dr. William Blackburne to Professor William Hamilton, 1789, Glasgow University Library, Special Collections MS Gen 1356/78. Blackburne said Boruwlaski had been “much countenanced by John Hunter.” Hunter commissioned a painting by Philip Reinagle: Joseph Boruwlaski (1782), Royal College of Surgeons of England.

Boruwlaski, Memoirs of the Celebrated Dwarf, pp. 199–201.

Morning Herald, July 22, 1782, BL.

Bondeson, A Cabinet of Medical Curiosities, pp. 85–86.

JH to William Petty (earl of Shelburne), July 29, 1782, cited in S. Wood, “Two Further Letters of John Hunter and Notes on Rockingham’s Last Illness from Hunter’s Case Book,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 5 (1949): 347–350.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 34–43. The paper “An Account of the Free-Martin” was first presented to the Royal Society in 1779.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 44–49. The paper “An Account of an Extraordinary Pheasant” was first presented to the Royal Society in 1780. See also Brian Cook, Contributions of the Hunter Brothers to Our Understanding of Reproduction, an Exhibition from the University Library’s Collections (leaflet, Glasgow: Glasgow University Library, Special Collections Department, 1992). As well as discussing Hunter’s discoveries and Darwin’s comments, this paper also notes that one of the three freemartins was not, in fact, a true example—although this made little difference to Hunter’s conclusions.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 277–278.

JH, n.d., ms. 49 e 19, RCS.

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. lxvi.

Article from European Magazine in 1782, reprinted in John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), pp. 341–352. The £10,000 expenditure would be equivalent to about £600,000 today.

A set of notes of William’s lectures bears an inscription stating that they were purchased from the executor of the late Mr. Howison, who had long been an assistant, probably “in a manual capacity,” to William Hunter and Matthew Baillie, and records that Baillie made provision for Howison (personal communication to the author from Alan Callender, special collections assistant). John Howison, “Lectures Anatomical and Chirurgical by William Hunter,” ms., 2 vols., 1775, Newcastle University Library, Pybus Collection. Howison also took notes of John’s lectures. JH, The Works, vol. 1, p. 202. The preface refers to notes of Hunter’s lectures owned by Benjamin Brodie, which were ascribed to Mr. Howison.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” pp. 106–107. Ottley refers to Howison as “his [Hunter’s] man” and describes how he was set to follow Byrne.

A. M. Landolt and M. Zachmann, “The Irish Giant: New Observations Concerning the Nature of His Ailment,” The Lancet (1980), no. 1: 1311–1312. Thanks to Professor John Wass, professor of endocrinology at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, and to the Pituitary Foundation for medical advice. Childhood-onset acromegaly, or gigantism, is the term for overproduction of a growth hormone in childhood. Acromegaly is the same condition, after normal growth has stopped, in adults. Both usually have the same cause: a benign tumor on the pituitary gland. Today the tumor would be removed by surgery.

The three entertainments were advertised in the Morning Herald, April 11, 1782 (Mr. Astley’s show), August 1, 1782 (Mr. Katterfelto’s show), and October 29, 1782 (Mr. Breslaw’s show), as well as on various other dates, Guildhall Library.

Jessie Dobson, ed., Descriptive Catalogue of the Physiological Series in the Hunterian Museum (Edinburgh and London: E. & S. Livingstone, 1970), part 2, p. 201.

Morning Herald, November 18, 1782, Guildhall Library.

G. Frankcom and J. H. Musgrave, The Irish Giant (London: Duckworth, 1976), pp. 17, 26. Cotter eventually arrived in London in 1785. He was variously described as being between seven eight and eight seven.

Morning Herald, April 23, 1783, Guildhall Library; John Howison is listed as a house occupier in the Poor Rate Collector Books 1783, St Mary’s in the Fields Parish Records, Guildhall Library.

C. Helen Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783: A Memoir by Samuel Foart Simmons and John Hunter (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 1983), p. 27.

JH, Case Books, p. 98.

Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783, p. 71.

Obituary of William Hunter in Gentleman’s Magazine, 53 (1783), p. 364.

Brock (ed.), William Hunter 1718–1783, p. 27.

Joseph Adams, Memoirs, pp. 133–134.

Matthew Baillie to R. Barclay, cited in Stephen Paget, John Hunter, p. 238.

Brock, ed., William Hunter 1718–1783, p. 27. The remark is found in John Hunter’s annotations.

Adams, Memoirs, p. 92.

Tom Taylor, Leicester Square: Its Associates and Its Worthies (London: Bickers and Son, 1874), pp. 281, 341.

The house at 28 Leicester Square was later demolished and a pub currently stands on its site. A tatty bust of John Hunter stands in the square opposite. Details of the house’s interior are shown in a plan sketched by Hunter’s last assistant, William Clift in HA, p. 39.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxix. The £6,000 expenditure would be equivalent to £180,000 today.

Gentleman’s Magazine, 53 (1783), p. 541. Although the article states Byrne lost £700, a later court case attests to the theft of £770 in two banknotes.

Morning Herald, June 5, 1783, BL.

Ibid., June 16, 1783, BL.

Parker’s General Advertiser, June 5, 1783, BL.

Gentleman’s Magazine, 53 (1783), p. 541; British Magazine, n.d. (1783), in HA; Annual Reporter Chronicle, June 1783, cited in “The Demolition of Earl’s Court House,” West London Observer, February 6, 1886, facing p. 10 in HA.

Details of Hunter’s theft of the giant’s body are given in Ottley, “The Life,” pp. 106–107; and Taylor, Leicester Square, pp. 403–407. Both relate essentially the same story. The latter description, which includes details of the barn swap, is told by Richard Owen, based on the story handed down from Hunter’s last assistant, William Clift. Hunter would later claim he had paid 130 guineas.

Hunter’s outlay would be the equivalent of about thirty thousand pounds today.

JH to Edward Jenner, n.d. (1783), in John Baron, The Life of Edward Jenner (London: Henry Colburn, 1827), p. 65.

JH to Joseph Banks, n.d. (1787), transcribed in a leaflet, “John Hunter at Earl’s Court Kensington 1764–93,” reprinted in The Atheneum (1869–1870), HA. The original letter is said to have been destroyed when a bomb fell on the Hunterian Museum in 1941.

JH, Case Books, p. 382 (the Reverend Mr. Vivian, specimen P 205), p. 9 (Lady Beauchamp, specimen P 389), and p. 393 (Lieutenant General Desaguliers, specimen P 292); Jessie Dobson, “Some of John Hunter’s Patients,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons 42 (1968): 124–133 (Hon. Frederick Cornwallis, specimens P 378 and 379).

JH, Case Books, pp. 548–550.

14. The Poet’s Foot

JH to Edward Jenner, April 22, 1785, in JH, Letters from the Past, p. 36.

Joseph Adams, Memoirs, p. 93.

The Sketch, February 24, 1897, excerpt facing p. 39 in HA. This article, reporting the planned demolition of Hunter’s home at 28 Leicester Square in 1897, relates that Stevenson “is said to have chosen” the house as the scene for the activities of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson quotations are from Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (London and Glasgow: Collins, 1953; first published 1886), pp. 37–38.

William Clift, “Ground Plan of John Hunter’s House Based on the Plan Drawn from Memory and Annotated by William Clift in 1832,” p. 39, in HA. Everard Home gave the dimensions of the extension in Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxx.

James Williams to Mary Williams, October 8, 1793, cited in G. Edwards, “John Hunter’s Last Pupil,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 42 (1968): 68–70.

Home, “A Short Account,” pp. l–li.

Lord Holland [Henry Richard Vassall Fox], Further Memoirs of the Whig Party 1807–1821 (London: John Murray, 1905), p. 344; Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” p. 121.

JH to Edward Jenner, May 1788, cited in Ottley, “The Life,” p. 110.

Home, “A Short Account,” pp. l–li. Home describes Hunter’s various episodes of illness and treatment in detail.

Benjamin Franklin to Benjamin Vaughan, July 1785, cited in George Corner and Willard E. Goodwin, “Benjamin Franklin’s Bladder Stone,” Journal of the History of Medicine 8 (1953): 359–377.

JH et al. to Benjamin Vaughan, n.d. (1785), cited in Corner and Goodwin, “Benjamin Franklin’s Bladder Stone,” p. 366. One of the physicians was also named John Hunter, here Latinized as Ionnes Hunter, who is occasionally confused with the surgeon.

H. Leigh Thomas, Hunterian Oration 1827, WL.

Adams, Memoirs, p. 199.

“John Hunter,” newspaper clipping, no title, n.d., p. 13, in HA.

George C. Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 164–165, citing an advertisement in the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, October 1, 1785. Clift’s plan shows the hat pegs and pupils’ register.

JH, Hunterian Reminiscences, Being the Substance of a Course of Lectures in the Principles and Practices of Surgery Delivered by Mr John Hunter in the Year 1785, Taken in Shorthand and Afterwards Fairly Transcribed by the Late Mr James Parkinson, ed. J. W. K. Parkinson (London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1833).

John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), p. 134 (introductory lecture, 1815).

Bransby Blake Cooper, The Life of Sir Astley Cooper (London: J. W. Parker, 1843), vol. 1, p. 142.

The pupil’s register of St. George’s, vol. 1 (with reference to May 1789), transcript at RCS. Physick’s career is also discussed in Sir Ernest Finch, “The Influence of the Hunters on Medical Education,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 20 (1957): 205–248.

Cuthbert E. Dukes, “London Medical Societies in the Eighteenth Century,” Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine Section of the History of Medicine 53 (1960): 699–706.

Jessie Dobson, John Hunter, pp. 241–242.

Thomas Chevalier, Hunterian Oration 1821, WL. Chevalier was one of Hunter’s pupils.

Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 164–165, citing an advertisement in the Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, October 1, 1785.

Letter from John Gunning, William Walker, and Thomas Keate to the governors of St. George’s, n.d. (1793), printed verbatim in Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 282–296.

Cooper, The Life of Sir Astley Cooper, p. 232.

JH, Treatise on the Venereal Disease; Adams, Memoirs, p. 101.

Home, “A Short Account,” p. lxvi; Clift, “Ground Plan of John Hunter’s House.” The plan shows Hunter’s name by the door.

David Mannings, Sir Joshua Reynolds: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 271–272. Hunter’s portrait was no. 223, entitled Portrait of a gentleman, half length, in the customary style of many portrait titles, in the original catalog. Thanks to Elizabeth King, research assistant at the Royal Academy Library, for information on the portrait and the exhibition. Thanks also to Andrew Cunningham for explaining the archetypal philosopher’s pose.

Selwyn Taylor, John Hunter and His Painters (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1993), p. 1. Reynolds’s first portrait now hangs in the Court Room at the headquarters of the Society of Apothecaries, Apothecaries’ Hall. It is understood to have been donated by Weatherall’s nephew, Thomas Knight. Many thanks to Dee Cook, archivist of the Society of Apothecaries. The life mask is preserved at the RCS.

The items displayed in the Reynolds portrait are discussed in Taylor, John Hunter and His Painters; Sir Arthur Keith, “The Portraits and Personality of John Hunter,” British Medical Journal (1928): 205–209; Lord Brock, “Background Details in Reynolds’s Portrait of John Hunter,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 48 (1971): 219–226; and George Qvist, John Hunter, pp. 188–189.

The sketch of angled lines has been variously considered to show facial angles and branching arteries. My thanks to Dr. Alistair Hunter, academic manager of the dissecting rooms at Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’ School of Biomedical Sciences, who convincingly suggests they depict muscle fibers. This is probably a reference to the Croonian lectures on the muscles, which Hunter delivered to the RS.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 121; Ernest E. Irons, “The Last Illness of Sir Joshua Reynolds,” Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago 5 (1939): 119–142.

John Ehrman, The Younger Pitt (London: Constable, 1969), vol. 1, p. 594. My thanks to Cyrus Kerawala, maxillofacial surgeon at the Royal Surrey County Hospital, Guildford, for advice on the likely form of the cyst.

Home, “A Short Account,” pp. lvii–lviii.

John Richardson, The Annals of London (London: Cassell and Co., 2000), p. 218.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, pp. 398–400.

W. S. Lewis et al., eds., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–1961), vol. 33, p. 535 (letter from Walpole to Lady Ossory, November 4, 1786).

Adam Sisman, Boswell’s Presumptuous Task (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000), pp. 156–157.

James Boswell, Private Papers of James Boswell from Malahide Castle, ed. G. Scott and F. Pottle (New York: W. E. Rudge, 1933), vol. 17, p. 17 (entry for March 21, 1787), BL.

Ibid., pp. 74–75, 77, 83 (entries for March 7, 12, and 18, 1788).

R. H. Campbell and A. S. Skinner, Adam Smith (London and Canberra: Croom Helm, 1982), p. 202; John Rae, Life of Adam Smith (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895), p. 402.

Adam Smith to William Strahan, December 20, 1777, in Adam Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, ed. Ernest Campbell Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), pp. 229–230.

Rae, Life of Adam Smith, p. 406.

Adam Smith to Henry Dundas, July 18, 1787, in Smith, The Correspondence of Adam Smith, pp. 306–307.

Benita Eisler, Byron: Child of Passion, Fool of Fame (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1999), pp. 12–13; A. B. Morrison, “Byron’s Lameness,” The Byron Journal (1975): 24–31.

JH, Case Books, p. 148.

Eisler, Byron, pp. 42–43.

Thomas Gainsborough to unknown recipient, n.d. (but assumed to be April 1788), ms. 5610, Hunterian Society collection at WL.

The relationship between Haydn and Anne Hunter is discussed in Aileen K. Adams, “ ‘I Am Happy in a Wife’: A Study of Mrs John Hunter (1742–1821),” in Papers Presented at the Hunterian Bicentenary Commemorative Meeting (London: Royal College of Surgeons of England, 1995), pp. 32–37. Hadyn’s experience as Hunter’s patient is described in B. Bugyi, “J. Haydn and the Hunters,” in Proceedings of the XXIII International Congress of the History of Medicine, London September 2–9, 1972 (London: Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, 1974), vol. 2, pp. 904–907. In JH, The Works, vol. 1, pp. 568–569, Hunter says of nasal polyps that “the best mode of removing them is with a forceps.”

James Joseph Walsh, History of Medicine in New York: Three Centuries of Medical Progress (New York: National Americana Society, 1919), vol. 2, pp. 382–389.

Dobson, John Hunter, p. 179.

Jane M. Oppenheimer, “A Note on William Blake and John Hunter,” Journal of the History of Medicine 1 (1946): 41–45; William Blake, Poetry and Prose of William Blake, ed. G. Keynes (London: Nonesuch Press, 1927), pp. 865–887; Peter Ackroyd, Blake (London: Sinclair-Stevenson, 1995), pp. 30, 81.

15. The Monkey’s Skull

Newspaper cutting (no title), n.d. (penciled 1788), p. 13 in HA.

Richard Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy (London: RCS, 1840), vol. 5, pp. 177–178.

A Guide to the Hunterian Museum (London: RCS, 1993), p. 21.

Newspaper cutting (no title), n.d. (penciled 1788), p. 13 in HA.

Ibid.

Jessie Dobson, John Hunter, p. 190.

Benjamin Hutchinson, Biographia Medica, or Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Medical Characters That Have Existed from the Earliest Account of Time to the Present Period (London: J. Johnson, 1799), vol. 1, pp. 495–496. The total number of fossils is given as 2,773 by Richard Owen in JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 293. Frederic Wood Jones, in “John Hunter as a Geologist,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 12 (1953): 219–245, especially p. 233, calculated the collection at 2,957. Editors of the 1859 publication of Observations and Reflections on Geology erroneously gave the total as 415.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” p. 72; Gentleman’s Magazine 63 (1793), MS 5610, Hunterian Society Collection at WL.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 116.

Jessie Dobson, “John Hunter’s Animals,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 17 (1962): 379–486.

JH to an unknown recipient, January 15, 1793, Hunterian Letters 49 b 18a, Grey-Turner Bequest, RCS.

Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy, p. 41.

W. S. Lewis et al., eds., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–1961), vol. 15, p. 241 (letter from Walpole to the Reverend Robert Nares, October 5, 1793).

“Penny Cyclopaedia,” cited in Tom Taylor, Leicester Square: Its Associates and Its Worthies (London: Bickers and Son, 1874), pp. 418–419.

Jessie Dobson, A Guide to the Hunterian Museum (Physiological Series) (London: E & S Livingstone, 1958), passim.

Newspaper cutting (no title), n.d. (penciled 1788), p. 13 in HA.

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. xxxv.

Richard Owen, preface to “The Animal Oeconomy” in JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. xxxviii. The Italian anatomist Antonio Scarpa visited the collection in 1781 and the Dutch anatomist Peter Camper in 1785. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, professor of medicine at Göttingen, visited in the early 1790s. My thanks to Simon Chaplin for additional information.

Stephen Paget, John Hunter, p. 230.

For a comprehensive overview of the development of ideas on evolution, see Peter J. Bowler, Evolution: The History of an Idea, 3d ed. (Berkeley: Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2003). Other useful summaries include John C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its impact on Western Thought, 5th ed. (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1981); and Roy Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth Sciences in Britain 1660–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). Very many thanks to Andrew Cunningham for helping me to understand Hunter’s contribution to this field.

Stephen Inwood, The Man Who Knew Too Much: The Strange and Inventive Life of Robert Hooke 1635–1703 (London: Macmillan, 2002), pp. 125–126.

Bowler, Evolution, p. 51.

Bowler, Evolution, pp. 61–62; Greene, The Death of Adam, p. 76; Porter, The Making of Geology, p. 159.

Bowler, Evolution, pp. 69–70; John Gribben, Science: A History 1543–2001 (London: Allen Lane, 2002), pp. 218–219.

Greene, The Death of Adam, pp. 189–191; Bowler, Evolution, p. 52. Camper’s conclusions were published in 1791, two years after his death.

Bowler, Evolution, pp. 52–53.

Gribben, Science, pp. 221–226; Charles Coulston Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 576–582.

Other contemporaries of Hunter were similarly investigating pre-Darwinian evolutionary ideas, but they published their conclusions after his death. Erasmus Darwin, who had attended the Hunter brothers’ school back in 1753, put his views on the origins of life into verse. His first poetic efforts had been published in 1789, although his theory that all life developed from a single ancestor—“one living filament”—would only clearly be outlined in his two-volume work Zoonomia (1794 and 1796). See Charles Coulston Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 3, pp. 577–580. The French naturalist Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck published his belief in a primitive common ancestor in 1801 and then more fully in 1815. See Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 7, pp. 584–593; Gribben, Science, pp. 335–338; Bowler, Evolution, pp. 86–95.

For details on Charles Darwin, see Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London: Penguin, 1991). A useful short summary of Darwin and his ideas can be found in Patrick Tort, Charles Darwin: The Scholar Who Changed Human History (London: Thames & Hudson, 2001).

JH to Edward Jenner, July 6, 1777, and March 29, 1778, in JH, Letters from the Past, pp. 17, 20. Hunter told Jenner, “I am matching my Fossill [sic] as far as I can with the resent [sic].”

JH, The Works, vol. 4, p. 36.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 277–285.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 228.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 319–330, The paper “Observations Tending to Show That the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog Are All of the Same Species” was first published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society in 1787.

Edward Jenner to JH (n.d.), cited in JH, “Observations Tending to Show That the Wolf, Jackal, and Dog Are All of the Same Species.”

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 470–480. The paper “Observations on the Fossil Bones Presented to the Royal Society by His Most Serene Highness the Margrave of Anspach by the Late John Hunter,” was read to the Royal Society by Everard Home on May 8, 1794.

JH, Observations and Reflections on Geology. Two copies of the ms. version of this treatise exist. One is believed to have been taken in dictation by William Bell and William Clift (ms. 49 c 1), the other to have been copied by Clift between 1793 and 1800 (ms. 49 c 2). Both are preserved at the RCS Library.

JH, Observations and Reflections on Geology, p. x. Hunter’s contribution to geology is discussed in Jones, “John Hunter as a Geologist,” pp. 219–245; and in George Qvist, “Some Controversial Aspects of John Hunter’s Life and Work: Part 5, Geology and Palaeontology,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 61 (1979): 381–384.

JH, Observations and Reflections on Geology, p. xlvi.

J. Rennell to JH (n.d.), transcript in RCS, ms. 49 c 2, pp. 102–105. JH, ms. 49 c 1 and ms. 49 c 2, RCS. It has always been assumed that Rennell was commenting on the Observations and Reflections on Geology treatise, partly because later editors changed “thousands of years” to “thousands of centuries” in this, and partly because Rennell’s letter is attached to the two mss. from which it was published. It is conceivable that he was really commenting on Hunter’s “Observations on the Fossil Bones,” which also contains the phrase “many thousands of years.” In some ways, this would make more sense, as the paper was intended for the RS, while it is unclear why Hunter would seek Rennell’s views on his other treatise. Home read the fossils paper to the RS in 1794, after Hunter’s death, and either he or Hunter might have made the amendment.

JH to Edward Jenner, August 17 (no year, but identified as 1789), in JH, Letters from the Past, p. 39; JH, miscellaneous notes and extracts, n.d., ms. 49 e 19, RCS. Joseph Adams, a former pupil, stated that Hunter had been described as a materialist; see Adams, Memoirs, p. 233.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 3. It was Richard Owen who compiled Hunter’s various notes into the two volumes.

Ibid., p. 4.

Ibid., p. 246.

Ibid., p. 9.

Ibid., p. 203.

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, ed. Richard Dawkins (London: Gibson Square Books Ltd., 2003; first published 1871), pp. 9–10.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, p. 43.

Ibid., p. 37. This section is headed “On the Origin of Species,” although the title was probably added by Richard Owen while editing the original manuscript. My thanks to Simon Chaplin for elucidating this point and other advice on these notes.

George Qvist, “Some Controversial Aspects of John Hunter’s Life and Work: Part 6, Evolution,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 61 (1979): 478–483. Qvist called the collection “a museum of evolution.” Thanks to Andrew Cunningham for explaining that it was not.

JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 1, preface by Owen.

16. The Anatomist’s Heart

Details of Clift’s early life are taken from William Clift, “On His Condition as Hunter’s Clerk,” ms. 49 e 45, RCS; William Clift, “A Short Account of My Life” (1840), ms. 49 e 45, RCS; Richard Owen, biography of William Clift, n.d., ms. 49 e 45, RCS; Jessie Dobson, William Clift FRS (London: Heinemann, 1954); Frances Austin, ed., The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846 (Sheffield: University of Sheffield, 1991). Many thanks to Dr. Frances Austin-Jones for further advice on Clift’s life.

William Clift, “List of John Hunter’s Household” (1792), ms. 49 e 68, RCS.

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, March 5, 1792, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 30.

Dobson, William Clift FRS, pp. 10–11.

John Abernethy, Physiological Lectures (London: Longman, 1825), p. 209, quoting William Clift.

Benjamin Hutchinson, Biographia Medica, or Historical and Critical Memoirs of the Lives and Writings of the Most Eminent Medical Characters That Have Existed from the Earliest Account of Time to the Present Period (London: J. Johnson, 1799), vol. 1, p. 483.

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, December 24, 1792, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, pp. 49–50.

William Clift to John Clift, October 11, 1792, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, pp. 47–48; Jessie Dobson, “A Note on John Hunter,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 15 (1954): 345–346.

Dobson, William Clift FRS, p. 109.

R. H. Franklin, “John Hunter and His Relevance in 1977,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 60 (1978): 266–273.

William Clift, “A Short Account of My Life,” n.d., ms. 49 e 45, RCS.

Richard Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy (London: RCS, 1840), vol. 5, pp. 359, 11–12.

JH, The Works, vol. 4, pp. 422–466. The paper “Observations on Bees” was first read to the Royal Society on February 23, 1792.

Dobson, William Clift FRS, p. 10.

Jessé Foot, The Life, p. 242.

W. R. Le Fanu, “John Hunter’s Buffaloes,” British Medical Journal 2 (1931): 574.

Dobson, William Clift FRS, p. 8.

Details of Home’s life can be found in A. W. Beasley, Home Away from Home (Wellington: Central Institute of Technology, 2000).

Everard Home, “A Short Account,” p. lxv.

JH to his colleagues, July 9, 1792, in George C. Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 272–273. The complete correspondence between Hunter and his colleagues in their row of 1792–1793 is printed verbatim in Peachey’s biography.

John Gunning, William Walker, and Thomas Keate to JH, October 4, 1792, in Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 274–275.

Owen, ed., Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Physiological Series of Comparative Anatomy, vol. 5, pp. 120–126.

A. Peterkin, William Johnston, and R. Drew, Commissioned Officers in the Medical Services of the British Army 1660–1960 (London: Wellcome Historical Medical Library, 1968), vol. 1, p. 33. Details of Hunter’s later army career can be found in Lloyd G. Stevenson, “John Hunter, Surgeon-General 1790–1793,” Journal of the History of Medicine 19 (1964): 239–266. Stevenson cites Hunter’s correspondence collected at the Public Record Office. Thanks to Andrew Cunningham for helping put Hunter’s approach into an eighteenth-century context.

JH to the governors of St. George’s Hospital, February 28, 1793, in Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 275–282.

The surgeons’ reply (n.d.), in Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 282–296.

Surgeons’ letter to the committee appointed to examine the laws relative to the surgeons’ pupils and to consider the best method of improving their education, May 27, 1793, in Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 297–303.

James Williams to Mary Williams, October 8, 1793, in G. Edwards, “John Hunter’s Last Pupil,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 42 (1968): 68–70.

James Williams to Mary Williams, October 16, 1793, in Edwards, “John Hunter’s Last Pupil.”

William Clift, note added in JH, n.d., ms. 49 e 19, RCS.

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, October 18, 1793, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 79.

Jessie Dobson, “John Hunter’s Animals,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 17 (1962): 379–486.

James Williams to Mary Williams, October 16, 1793, in Edwards, “John Hunter’s Last Pupil.”

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, October 18, 1793, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 79.

Jessie Dobson, John Hunter, p. 344.

Peachey, A Memoir, pp. 219–221.

Drewry Ottley, “The Life,” pp. 131–132. Details of Hunter’s last minutes are also related in James Williams to Mary Williams, October 16, 1793, in Edwards, “John Hunter’s Last Pupil”; William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, October 18, 1793, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 79; and Home, “A Short Account,” p. lxi.

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, October 18, 1793, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 79; James Williams to Mary Williams, October 16, 1793, in Edwards, “John Hunter’s Last Pupil.”

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, October 18, 1793, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 79.

W. S. Lewis et al., eds., The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole’s Correspondence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1937–1961), vol. 12, p. 38 (letter from Walpole to M. Berry, October 19, 1793), and vol. 15, p. 244 (letter from Walpole to the Reverend Robert Nares, October 20, 1793).

Joseph Farington, The Farington Diary, ed. J. Greig (London: Hutchinson and Co., 1922–1928), vol. 1, pp. 6–7 (entry for October 17, 1793).

European Magazine, November 1793, clipping on p. 11 of the HA; Gentleman’s Magazine, 63 (1793), pp. 964–965; The Sun, October 1793, cutting on p. 16 of the HA.

Lloyd Allan Wells, “Aneurysm and Physiological Surgery,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 44 (1970): 422.

Home, “A Short Account,” pp. lxii–lxv.

Dobson, John Hunter, p. 349.

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, November 20, 1793, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 81.

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, October 18, 1793, in Austin, The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 79.

Clift, “List of John Hunter’s Household.”

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 137.

Sir Arthur Porritt, “John Hunter’s Women,” Transactions of the Hunterian Society 17 (1958–1959): 81–111.

William Clift to Elizabeth Clift, October 18, 1793, in Austin The Clift Family Correspondence 1792–1846, p. 79.

Ottley, “The Life,” p. 142.

William Clift, “Note on the Preservation of the Hunterian Observations Before Their Destruction by Sir Everard Home,” n.d., ms. 49 e 45, RCS.

William Clift, evidence to the parliamentary committee on medical education (1834), in JH, Essays and Observations, vol. 2, pp. 493–500; and in Stephen Paget, John Hunter, pp. 252–256.

Paget, John Hunter, p. 253, quoting Clift.

Beasley, Home Away from Home, p. 83, quoting article in The Lancet (1832).

George Qvist, John Hunter, p. 72.

Abernethy, Physiological Lectures, p. 5.

Sir Arthur Keith, “Memorable Visits of Charles Darwin to the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons,” Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 11 (1952): 362–363.

Newspaper clipping on p. 24 in the HA; Illustrated London News of the World, April 2, 1859, on p. 27 in the HA; newspaper clipping (n.d.), Hunterian Society Catalogue, MS 5616, 29/2, WL.

Richard Owen, biography of William Clift, ms. 49 e 45, RCS.