Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/107

Rh Everard Home was appointed to the office. In the year 1789, he succeeded Mr Adair as inspector general of hospitals, and surgeon general of the army, and about the same time was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland.

In the year 1792, Mr Hunter found that the period which he allotted to lecturing interfered so much with his other avocations, that he gave his materials for the lectures into the hands of Sir Everard Home, who relieved him of this duty. He now therefore began to prepare for the press his "Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-shot wounds," the data for which he had been collecting for many years. In his dedication to the king, he states that his appointment as surgeon on the staff in the expedition against Belleisle afforded him the opportunities of attending to gun-shot wounds, of seeing the errors and defects in that branch of military surgery, and of studying to remove them. He further adds, that it drew his attention to inflammation in general, and enabled him to make the observations which form the bases of that doctrine, which has since his time excited so much controversy among physiologists. By a series of very interesting experiments, and by a very ingenious mode of reasoning, he came to the conclusion maintained by this doctrine, which holds, that the blood as existing in its fluid state is alive, and that its death causes the changes which are observed to take place when it is abstracted from the body. In the Old Testament we read, "ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh; for the life of all flesh is the blood," (Levit. xvii. 14.) The same doctrine too seems promulgated in the Alcoran and appears to have been maintained by the celebrated Harvey; but notwithstanding these facts, there is no reason to presume that the idea was plagiarized by John Hunter: on the contrary, his opinion was with him original, inasmuch as it was elicited by the experiments which he himself performed. This would by no means be an appropriate place to discuss the general merits of this physiological doctrine; but we do not err in stating that it is supported by very plausible evidence, arid is maintained by many eminent men of science. The nature and seat of the living principle which raises man above the inanimate beings by which he is surrounded, is manifestly beyond the reach of human investigation; but it must be satisfactory to those who have not time nor inclination even to examine the evidence which has been on either side adduced, to find, that such men as John Hunter and Abernethy recognized the existence of something beyond the mere mechanism of the human frame; that they in their acute reasonings urged the existence of an internal and self-sustaining principle, which modifies the different conditions of matter, and must be therefore superior to its decay.

In the year 1792, Mr Hunter was elected an honorary member of the Chirurgico-Physical Society of Edinburgh, and likewise connected himself with the Veterinary College, then just projected in London. "The origin of this institution," says Dr Adams, "was at Odiham in Hampshire; the Agricultural Society of which had offered a premium for the best account of the glanders. Mr Sergeant Bell was the fortunate candidate, and the society Mas so well pleased with his piece, that in a little time after, a Veterinary College was projected, over which that gentleman should preside. As soon as the proposal was known to Mr Hunter he eagerly joined it, urging the advantages which might be derived from it, not only to quadrupeds, but to man, by extending our knowledge of physiology and more especially of pathology. In order to forward the plan, several gentlemen, the duke of Bedford at their head, deposited £500 on the chance of its being never returned. Mr Hunter was one of the number. It was proposed that he should examine Mr Sergeant Bell, to which he readily assented. It will easily be conceived by those who are not at all acquainted