Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/400

386 386 HUNTER the coagulation of the blood were among the subjects of his inquiries. 1 Later, on land, he continued the study of human anatomy, and arranged his notes and memoranda on inflammation ; he also ascertained by experiment that digestion does not take place in snakes and lizards during hibernation, and observed that enforced vigorous movement at that season proves fatal to such animals, the waste so occasioned not being compensated, whence he drew the inference that, in the diminution of the power of a part attendant on mortification, resort to stimulants which in crease action without giving real strength is inadvisable. 2 A MS. catalogue by Hunter, probably written soon after his return from Portugal, shows that he had already made a collection of about two hundred specimens of natural and morbid structures. On arriving in England early in 1763, Hunter, having retired from the army on half-pay, took a house in Golden Square, and commenced the career of a London surgeon. Most of the metropolitan practice at the time was held by Pott, C. Hawkins, Sharpe, Warner, Adair, and Tomkins ; and Hunter sought to eke out his at first slender income by teaching practical anatomy and operative surgery to a private class. His leisure was devoted to the study of comparative anatomy, to procure subjects for which he obtained the refusal of animals dying in the Tower menagerie and in various travelling zoological collections. In connexion with his rupture of a tendo Achillis, 3 in 1767, he psrformed on dogs several experiments which, with the illustrations in his museum of the reunion of such structures after division, laid the foundation of the modern practice of cutting through tendons for the relief of distorted and contracted joints. In the same year he was made a fellow of the Royal Society. His first contribution to the- Philosophical Transactions, with the exception of a supple ment to a paper by J. Ellis in the volume for 1766, was an essay on post-mortem digestion of the stomach, written at the request of Sir J. Pringle, and read June 18, 1772, in which he first correctly explained that phenomenon as a result of the action of the gastric juice. 4 Hunter, on December 9, 1768, was elected a surgeon to St George s Hospital, and, soon after, a member of the Corporation of Surgeons. He now began to take house-pupils. Among these were Edward Jenner, who came to him in 1770, and until the time of Hunter s death corresponded with him on the most intimate and affectionate terms, W. Guy, Kingston, Dr Physick of Philadelphia, and Everard Home, his brother- in-law. Mr Lynn and Sir A. Carlisle, though not inmates of his house, were frequent visitors there. His pupils at 1 Treatise on the Blood, p. 21. 2 See Adams, Memoirs, pp. 32, 33. Cf. Hunter s Treatise on the Blood, p. 8, and Works, ed. Palmer, i. 604. On the employment of Hunter s term &quot;increased action&quot; with respect to inflammation, see Paget, Lect. on Surg. Path., 3d ed., p. 321 sqq. 3 According to Hunter, as quoted in Palmer s edition of his lectures, p. 437, the accident was &quot;after dancing, and after a violent fit of the cramp ; &quot; Clift, however, who says he probably never danced, believed that he met with the accident &quot; in getting up from the dis secting table after being cramped by long sitting &quot; (see W. Lawrence, Hunt. Orat., 1834, p. 64). 4 The subjects and dates of his subsequent papers in the Trans actions, the titles of which give little notion of the richness of their contents, are as follows: The torpedo, 1773; air-receptacles in birds, and the Gillaroo trout, 1774; the Gymnotus electricus, and the production of heat by animals and vegetables (supplemented in 1777), 1775; the recovery of people apparently drowned, 1776; the free martin, 1779 ; the communication of smallpox to the foetus in utero, and the occurrence of male plumage in old hen pheasants, 1780 ; the organ of hearing in fishes, 1782; the anatomy of a &quot;new marine animal&quot; described by Home, 1785; the specific identity of the wolf, jackal, and dog (supplemented in 1789), the effect on fertility of extir pation of one ovarium, and the structure and economy of whales, 1787; observations on bees, 1793 ; and some remarkable caves in Bayreuth and fossil bones found therein, 1794. With these may be included a paper by Home, from materials supplied by Hunter, on certain horny excrescences of the human body. St George s included Abernethy, Cline, James Earle, and Astley Cooper. From the high reputation in their profes sion which these one and all attained, some estimate may be formed of the weight and value of Hunter s personal influence and teaching. In 1770 he settled in Jermyn Street, in the house which his brother William had pre viously occupied; and in July 1771 he married Anne, the eldest daughter of Mr Robert Home, surgeon to Burgoyne s regiment of light-horse. 5 From 1772 till his death Hunter resided during autumn at a house built by him at Earl s Court, Brompton, where most of his biological researches were carried on. There he kept for the purpose of study aud experiment the fishes, lizards, blackbirds, hedgehogs, and other animals sent him from time to time by Jenner, tame pheasants and partridges, at least one eagle, toads, silkworms, and many more creatures obtained from every quarter of the globe. Bees he had under observation in his conservatory for upwards of twenty years ; hornets and wasps were also diligently studied by him. On two occasions his life was in risk from his pets once in wrestling with a young bull, and again when he fearlessly took back to their dens two leopards which had broken loose among his dogs. Choos ing intuitively the only true method of philosophical dis covery, Hunter, ever cautious of confounding fact and hypothesis, besought of nature the truth through the medium of manifold experiments and observations. &quot; He had never read Bacon,&quot; says Babington, &quot; but his mode of studying nature was as strictly Baconian as if he had.&quot; 6 To Jenner, who had offered a conjectural explanation of a phenomenon, he writes, August 2, 1775: I think your solution is just ; but why think ? why not try the experi ment? Repeat all the experiments upon a hedgehog 7 as soon as you receive this, and they will give you the solu tion.&quot; Perhaps no man busily engaged in professional practice has ever conducted so many physiological and pathological investigations in the animal world as Hunter ; and yet it was with him an axiom &quot; that experiments should not be often repeated which tend merely to establish a principle already known and admitted, but that the next step should be the application of that principle to useful purposes&quot; (&quot;Anim. CEcon.,&quot; Works, iv. 86). During fifteen years he kept a flock of geese simply in order to acquaint himself with the development of birds in eggs, with refer ence to which he remarked &quot; It would almost appear that this mode of propagation was intended for investigation.&quot; In his toxicological and other researches, in which his ex perience had led him to believe that the effects of noxious drugs are nearly similar in the brute creation and in man, he had already, in 1780, as he states, &quot;poisoned some thousands of animals.&quot; 8 By inserting shot at definite distances in the leg-bones of young pigs, and also by feeding them with madder, by which all fresh osseous deposits are tinged, 9 Hunter obtained evidence that bones increase in size, not by the intercalation of new amongst old particles, as had been 6 Mrs Hunter died January 7, 1821, in Holies Street, Cavendish Square, London, in her seventy-ninth year. She was a handsome and accomplished woman, and well fulfilled the social duties of her position. The words for Haydn s English canzonets were supplied by her, and were mostly original poems ; of these the lines beginning &quot; My mother bids me bind my hair &quot; are, from the beauty of the accom panying music, among the best known. (See R. Nares in Gent. Mag., xci., pt. 1, p. 89, quoted in Nichols s Lit. Anec., 2d ser., vii. 638.) 6 Hunt. Orat., 1842, p. 15. 7 The condition of this animal during hibernation was a subject of special interest to Hunter, who thus introduces it, even in a letter of condolence to Jenner in 1778 on a disappointment in love: &quot;But let her go, never mind her. I shall employ you with hedgehogs, for I do not know how far I may trust mine. 1 8 See his evidence at the trial of Captain Donellan, Works, i. 195. 9 On the discovery of the dyeing of bones by madder, see Belchier, Phil. Trans., vol. xxxix., 1736, pp. 287 aud 299.