Volume 1

Catalogue of the anatomical and pathological preparations of Dr. William Hunter; prepared by J.H. Teacher.

  • Hunterian Museum (University of Glasgow)
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Catalogue of the anatomical and pathological preparations of Dr. William Hunter; prepared by J.H. Teacher. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

    42/488 (page 34)
    from his writings and from Simmons' statements that in the five years before 1746 he was constantly engaged in dissection, injection, and experiment; laying, at the same time, the foundations of his power as an anatomist and of his museum. The art of injecting—filling the vessels, whether blood-vessels, lymphatics, or ducts, with some fluid which would bring them clearly into view, either as an experiment in itself or as a preliminary to dissection—was one of the principal methods by which the sciences of anatomy and physiology were then being advanced; the injection apparatus and fluids being to the anatomists of those days what the microtome and stains have been to the anatomists of the last thirty years. The art received consider- able improvements at the hands of William Hunter. Most of the anatomical preparations in the collection are injected, and their beauty and fineness attest the excellence to which he had brought the art. One can hardly speak of any period of Hunter's life as the years •of his greatest activity either in research or in the formation of the museum. Research and collecting went on constantly from 1741 to 1783. The most important of his works were written between 1750 and 1774, but he left much unfinished, some of which was published after his death. Part of this dates from before 1774, but certainly a good deal of it was of later date. The MS. catalogue of the anatomical and pathological preparations transmitted to Glasgow with the museum by his trustees, was written for the most part between 1778 and 1780, but this was only the last edition of the work, which had grown up along with the museum; •earlier catalogues exist in the museum. The bulk of it is in the handwriting of an amanuensis, but in one of the copies there are numerous later additions interlined in William Hunter's writing. The latest date—the only one in the interlineations—is 1782. Clearly the museum work and the researches were continued, as were his lectures, on to the end of his life. He was only 64 when he died. In 1748 there were two events that were of great moment to the museum. The one was a second tour on the Continent, which included a visit to Albinus, the famous Dutch anatomist, whose admirable injections, as he [Hunter] afterwards told Dr. Cullen, inspired him with a strong emulation to excel in that elegant and curious branch of anatomy. ^ The other was the arrival in ^ Simmons, op, ciL, p. 13.