The anatomical and pathological preparations of Dr. William Hunter in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow.

  • John Hammond Teacher
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The anatomical and pathological preparations of Dr. William Hunter in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    course all preparations made by John during these years were made at William’s expense, and remained his property. From 1743 to 1756 William Hunter printed nothing. After 1756 come in rapid succession a number of short papers and one elaborate work of a very strange kind, entitled Medical Commentaries. The preceding thirteen years were very busy ones in the way of research, and many discoveries resulted, which were communicated as they were made to his class. He deemed it better that his students should get the benefit of the new knowledge at once than wait till he should have time to publish it. Naturally others who were engaged in similar work made the same discoveries, but they published them, in some cases certainly knowing that Hunter had taught them publicly for years, yet wilfully ignoring him. Thence arose fierce controversy as to priority of discovery. The full title of the work which contains Hunter’s side of these disputes is—“Medical Com- mentaries, part 1, containing a plain and direct answer to Professor Monro, jun., interspersed with remarks on the structure, functions, and diseases of several parts of the human body.”1 The book abounds in references to dissections and experiments made during those years, with minute details as to the dates at which they were made, and it therefore throws a great deal of light on Hunter’s occupations and the formation of certain parts of the anatomical museum. Unfortunately the history of the controversies is also detailed at great length, the anatomy being “ interspersed ” through it. Consequently the Commentaries are most wearisome reading. What is of value in them from the scientific point of view, apart from their historical interest, is buried in a vast dust heap of argument and abuse of his opponents. His opponents’ writings are just as bad or worse. Fortunately no other of his works appears in like form. In justice to him it may be said that he had the right side in the quarrel; he proved his contention as to priority, and that his opponents should have recognized his work in their writings. Such appears to have been the feeling among his contemporaries.2 1 Medical Commentaries, 4to, London, 1762. Supplement, 1764 ; second edition, 1787. The controversies were with the Monros of Edinburgh and Percival Pott. Vide Observations, Anatomical and Physiological, by Alex- ander Monro, jun., pamphlet, 8vo, Edin. 1758, and also the same author’s Treatise on the Brain, and Pott’s Treatise on Ruptures, second edition, London, 1763. Mr. S. Paget has given a fair account of the controversies in his Life of John Hunter, pp. 56 et seq. Hunter’s Commentaries, it is well known, were revised for him by Smollet. 2 “ I believe, I may assert, that the sentiments of the great majority of men
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