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Rh became his pupil, and describes the museum as at this time filling all the best rooms in his house. Travellers often sent him rarities, and he also bought anything curious bearing on his subjects. Until 1774, however, his income did not reach 1,000l. a year. In 1773 he began to lecture on the theory and practice of surgery, at first to his pupils and a few friends admitted gratuitously, but afterwards on payment of a fee of four guineas. In these lectures Hunter may be said to have first introduced into this country the idea of `principles' of surgery, including a rational explanation of processes of repair and a scientific basis for operations. He never overcame his difficulty in lecturing, and at the beginning of each course he always composed himself by a draught of laudanum. He read his lectures on alternate evenings from October to April from seven to eight o'clock. His class was usually comparatively small, seldom exceeding thirty, but it included such men as Astley Cooper, Cline, Abernethy, Anthony Carlisle, Chevalier, and Macartney. In 1773 he had his first attack of angina pectoris, from which he afterwards suffered very severely when mentally distressed. In 1775 he engaged a young artist named William Bell to reside with him, make anatomical preparations and drawings, and superintend his museum. Bell stayed with him till 1789, when he became an assistant-surgeon to the East India Company, and died in 1792. In January 1776 Hunter was appointed surgeon extraordinary to George III, and in the same year, being interested in the Humane Society's work, drew up for the Royal Society his 'Proposals for the Recovery of People apparently Drowned.' In the same year he delivered before the Royal Society the first of his six 'Croonian Lectures' on muscular motion, 1776-82, which were published posthumously in his works. In 1777 Hunter suffered severely from vertigo. He had to leave London and visit Bath in the autumn, when he met Jenner, who was surprised at his altered appearance, and diagnosed that he had an organic affection of the heart. In January 1780 Hunter read a paper before the Royal Society on the structure of the human placenta, in which he laid exclusive claim to certain discoveries regarding the utero-placental circulation which his brother had claimed in his lectures and in his work on the uterus. William Hunter protested in a letter to the society (3 Feb. 1780) that the discovery was well known to be his, and had never been previously contested. John Hunter in reply asserted that he had made the discoveries in dissecting a preparation in May 1754, with Dr. Mackenzie, an assistant of Smellie, and that he had afterwards communicated them to his brother, who at first pooh-poohed and afterwards adopted them. The society decided not to print John Hunter's paper or the correspondence. His account as to facts may be safely accepted. There is no doubt that in William's study of the subject this dissection figured only as one incident, or that he regarded discoveries made in his dissecting room as his property. An estrangement followed between the brothers, which was barely healed on the deathbed of the elder. In 1781 Hunter was called as a scientific witness by the defence in the trial of Captain Donellan at Warwick for the alleged poisoning of his brother-in-law, Sir Theodosius Boughton, with laurel-water, and in cross-examination became hesitating and confused, and was contemptuously mentioned by the judge, Francis Buller [q.v.] His evidence had really been given with proper scientific caution, and stands the test of later knowledge. In 1783 he acquired the most expensive specimen in his museum, the skeleton of O'Brien or O'Byrne, the Irish giant, seven feet seven inches high, said to have cost him 500l. The giant had by his will tried to prevent Hunter from obtaining his skeleton, by ordering his coffin to be securely sunk in deep water; but Hunter bribed the undertaker heavily, and the body was stolen while on its way to the sea, was taken by Hunter to Earl's Court in his own carriage, and was promptly skeletonised. In this year he was elected a member of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Academy of Surgery of Paris, and he took part in forming a Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge, which lasted about twenty years, and published three volumes of 'Transactions,'

In view of the expiration of his lease in Jermyn Street in the end of 1783, he bought the lease for twenty-four years of two houses, one on the east side of Leicester Square (No. 28), and the other in Castle Street, with the intervening ground. During the next two or three years he spent 3,000l. in building on the vacant ground a large museum, with lecture-rooms below (now used as a violin maker's factory), carrying on his anatomical work in the Castle Street house, and living in Leicester Square. His collections, which had cost him 10,000l., were removed into the museum in April 1785, under the care of Everard Home, Bell, and Andre, another assistant. In this year he made the experiments on the mode of growth of deer's antlers which resulted in his discovery of the establishment of collateral circulation by anastomosing branches of arteries. The discovery led him in December to tie the femoral artery of a patient suffering from popliteal aneurysm, trusting to Rh