NOTES. IN studying the life of Hunter I found or thought of many things which could not be well used in the Oration, but may be worth printing, whether for amendment of some of its defects or for subjects for the thoughts of others. I have therefore arranged them in the following notes:- 1 Note A, to p. 3. I have not found evidence of an observation in any kind of science made by Hunter before he came to London. Sir Everard Home says that he came in 1748, when he was twenty years old, and this agrees with the times assigned for his beginning to study under Cheselden and Pott. In an article in the European Magazine in 1782, the materials for which, the editor told Mr. Abernethy,2 were supplied by Hunter himself, it is said that he was eighteen when he came to town. The best life of Hunter, by very far, is that by Drewry Ottley, prefixed to Palmer's edition of his works (Vol. I., 8vo. 188.). I have taken from it the following calendar of the chief events of his life : 1728. Born. 1748. Came to London. 1749-50. Studied at Chelsea Hospital, under Cheselden. 1751. Studied at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, under Pott and others. 1752. In Scotland. 1754. Studied at St. George's Hospital. 1 Life, in the 4to. edition of the Treatise on the Blood, p. xv. 2 Physiological Lectures, 8vo. 1822, Ed. ii. p. 201. The article is reprinted as an Appendix, p. 341. 1756. House Surgeon there. Became partner with his brother in the anatomical school. 1759. Threatened with consumption and obtained Staff-Surgeoncy in the Army. 1761. Served at the siege of Belleisle. 1762. Served in Portugal. 1763. Began to practise as a surgeon in London, and to lecture on anatomy and operative surgery. 1767. Elected F.R.S. 1768. Elected Surgeon to St. George's. 1770. Jenner became his house-pupil. 1771. Published his work on the Teeth. 1772. Married Miss Home. 1773. First attack of angina. 1774. Began lectures on the 'Principles of Surgery.' 1776. Appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to the King. 1783. Elected a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and Royal Academy of Surgery of Paris. Began to build his Museum in Leicester Square; completed in 1785. 1785. Performed his operation for aneurism. 1786. Appointed Deputy-Surgeon-General to the Army. Published his work on the Venereal Disease, and his work on the Received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society. Opened his Museum 1789. Appointed Surgeon-General and Inspector. 1792. Ceased to lecture, being over-worked and in very uncertain health. Began printing his work on the Blood and Inflammation. 1793. Oct. 16. Sudden death at St. George's Hospital. Note B, to p. 3. The estimate which may be formed of the father of the Hunters, from a letter published by Dr. Simmons,' is confirmed by his portrait in the very interesting collection of Mr. W. 1 Life and Writings of the late William Hunter, 8vo. 1783, p. 5, and see Ottley's Life of John Hunter, p. 2; and an excellent Essay on William Hunter by Dr. Matthews Duncan, in the Edinburgh Medical Journal, June 1876. William Hunter's character may also be studied in his Two Introductory Lectures, 4to. 1784. One sister of the two Hunter Baillie, his great-grandson. Hunters, Dorothea, was mother of Dr. Matthew Baillie and Miss Joanna and Miss Agnes Baillie. The eldest son, James Hunter, was with his brother William for some time and died young; but he had given such evidence of talent as made William Hunter believe that if he had lived he would have become the leading physician in London. Note C, to p. 6. I am indebted to Messrs. Christie and Manson for the opportunity of reading the sale-catalogue of Hunter's collections and library. About 120 pictures were sold for £800. They were chiefly by old masters, including some of the best; and there were several by Hunter's chief contemporaries, Hogarth, Reynolds, Loutherbourg, Zoffany, and Zuccarelli. Among them, also, were some medical portraits, including one of Harvey, by Janssen. The engravings, including a large collection of Hogarth's, sold for about £140; the curiosities' fetched about £200; and the books, including, I think, nothing significant, about £160. The proceeds of the four days' sale, in January and February 1794, amounted to nearly £1,300. Mr. Taylor, who was so good as to show me the catalogue, thought that a similar collection would sell now for £10,000. It is hard to say whether Hunter's love of collecting pictures was connected with any real taste for the fine arts. I think it was; and that in this was the only instance of his studying anything but science. Mr. Rumsey, the best reporter of his lectures, says: It has been said of Mr. John Hunter that he had a great dislike to works of imagination, his long study of matters of fact having rendered every other species of writing disagreeable to him.' 1 6 He had strong convictions on politics; but, if what is said at page 13 on the relation between knowledge and convictions be true, he may not have studied them. There is a letter of his in which he writes about his museum : • If your friend is in London in October (and not a Democrate), he is welcomb 1 1 Life and Character of Thomas Bateman. London, 1826, p. 89. to see it; but I would rather see it in a blaze, like the Bastile, than show it to a Democrate, let his country be what it may.' And among the notes in the Essays and Observations,' he says: All innovations on established systems that depend more on a belief than real knowledge (such as religion), arise rather from a weakness of mind than a fault in the system. Everything new carries a greater weight with it, and makes a deeper impression on a weak mind.' 6 Note D, to p. 8. A Life of John Hunter' was published by Mr. Jesse Foot,' who had endeavoured to be his rival in practice, and failed. He took the part of Devil's advocate, and wrote with as much spite as even his client could have wished; depreciating as much as he could all that the Hunters did, and ascribing to bad motives all the good work that he could not deny. But the worst that one can fairly suspect, from the worst that he says or hints, is that John Hunter had a very keen love of scientific reputation, and that sometimes the provocation of controversy quickened his work and his publication of what he had done. This is, indeed, sometimes apparent in his writings; but his desire for reputation is of a kind which rather indicates a doubt in his own mind as to whether he had any; and Jesse Foot's suggestion, that he worked at science only or chiefly that he might attract attention and get into practice as a surgeon, is too absurd. All the evidence tends the other way, and shows his earnest desire to live by surgery for science. Note E, to pp. 10, 11. Hunter's great industry impressed all who knew him, and is recorded by all who have written of him. Even Jesse Foot says: Perhaps there cannot be found his equal who so completely filled up time in active industry.' Of the quantity 56 1 Vol. i. p. 267. 2 London, 8vo. 1794. 3 As in his Lectures, Works, vol. i. 208-10. On the Blood, Inflammation, &c., Works, vol. iii. p. 2. 4 Especially by Home in Life, pp. xviii. xxi. Ottley in Life, pp. 54-5, &c. Thomas, Hunterian Oration, 1827. Lawrence, Hunterian Oration, 1846, of manuscripts left, Mr. Clift says: There were, I should calculate, nearly, if not quite, a hundred volumes of folio MS. in forrel binding; of course not all equally filled. We always wrote on the left-hand page only. . . . . Besides these folios there were a very large number of smaller cases and memoirs in quarto, stitched.' Among these, probably, the manuscripts of Hunter's published as well as unpublished works were included. (See further, p. 51.) In It should be remembered, in further evidence of Hunter's strength of will, that he worked against the hindrances of frequent illness. The account given by Home of all he endured during the last twenty years of his life is a record of such distress as would have made an ordinary man utterly idle. In 1759 he had pneumonia, and was obliged to leave London. 1769 and the following three years he had fits of gout; in 1773 his first attack of angina; in 1776 and 1785 he was again severely ill; in 1789 he had cerebral disturbance; in 1790 and the following three years were severe attacks of angina; and during all this time he was in expectation of sudden death in some emotion, so that he used to say that ' his life was in the hands of any rascal who chose to annoy and tease him.' 6 2 It is believed that Hunter did not begin to collect for his own museum till after his return from Portugal in 1763, and that all his previous collecting had been for his brother's museum, of which Home 3 says that he laid the foundation. But in the MS. essay on the Pneumobranchiata, in the CollegeLibrary, Hunter says in 1758, of a Mr. Lake, from whom he obtained some of the specimens described: I bought his whole collection of things.' How keen he grew for facts as he grew old, may be seen in the following letter, written in the last year of his life to some friend in Africa. It is printed literatim. Dear Sir,—I was favoured with your letter of September 31, informing me of 2 birds called the Habanah being shipped on board the Bull Dog, but unluckly the birds died on the passage home. I 1 Lawrence, Hun'eriun Oration, 1846, p. 62. 3 Hunterian Oration, 1814, p. 24. |