John Hunter : surgeon and naturalist... / [Douglas Guthrie].

  • Douglas James Guthrie
Date:
[1942]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: John Hunter : surgeon and naturalist... / [Douglas Guthrie]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    that his livelihood must be gained by handicraft rather than by scholarship. But as John Hunter grew to manhood his ambition became at length aroused, and indeed it is uncertain whether he was engaged in woodwork for more than a short time. Early Days in London At the age of twenty he joined his brother William in London, and entered upon a career which became steadily more strenuous and more fruitful of results until his death, forty-five years later. William, ten years his senior, was already making a name for himself as an anatomist and obstetrician, a strange combination to our way of thinking but not unusual at that time. William Hunter was originally destined for the Church, and he had received a good education before he came under the spell of Dr William Cullen, who practised medicine in the town of Hamilton, and who afterwards became Professor of Medicine in the University of Edinburgh. After assisting Cullen for several years, William Hunter went to London, and there he lived with Dr Smellie, of Lanark, who had come to London two years previously and was already a successful accoucheur and apothecary, with a shop in Pall Mall. William Hunter also assisted Dr John Douglas, the anatomist, whose name survives in the “ pouch of Douglas, and he succeeded him as lecturer in Anatomy a few years later. It is interesting to note that William Hunter became a member of the Royal Medical Society in 1775. An older brother, James, who had been a Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, forsook Law for Medicine and joined his brother William, embarking upon a career of great promise. Unfortunately, however, he was stricken with pulmonary tuberculosis and returned home to die at the age of twenty-nine years. A sister, Dorothea Hunter, married Rev. Dr James Baillie, who became Professor of Divinity at Glasgow. Of this marriage were born three children Matthew, a distin¬ guished physician of London and one of John Hunter s trustees ; Joanna, who made a name for herself in literature and was a friend of Sir Walter Scott , and Agnes, who, if not distinguished in life, was at least tenacious of it,” as she died in her 101st year. Certainly the Hunter family possessed brains, and there
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