William Hunter was of an elegant figure, slender, and rather below the middle height. The portrait of him by Sir Joshua Reynolds adorns the Hunterian Museum at Glasgow. An unfinished painting by Zoffany represents him in the attitude of lecturing on the muscles at the Royal Academy, surrounded by academicians. Hunter’s portrait is the only completed part. It was presented to the College of Physicians by Mr. Bransby Cooper in 1829.
We hear of no matrimonial projects at any time on William Hunter’s part. He was wedded to his museum, his profession, his lectures. He lived a frugal life, eating little food, and that plainly prepared; rising early, and being always at work. When he invited friends to dine with him, he seldom provided more than two courses, and he often said, “A man who cannot dine on one dish deserves to have no dinner.” A single glass of wine was handed after dinner to each guest. Some accused him of parsimony. The truth is that he did not relish the amusements and luxuries in which most people indulge, but he was by no means parsimonious as to the pursuits in which he found real pleasure. His biographer, Dr. Foart Simmons, says: “There was something very engaging in his manner and address, and he had such an appearance of attention to his patients when he was making his inquiries as could hardly fail to conciliate their confidence and esteem. In consultation with his medical brethren, he delivered his opinions with diffidence and candour. In familiar conversation he was cheerful and unassuming. All who knew him allow that he possessed an excellent understanding, great readiness of perception, a good memory, and a sound judgment.”
Dr. Hunter made no bequest to his brother John; but he knew that the latter was well established and successful. Still, his bequest of the family estate at Long Calderwood to his nephew, Dr. Baillie, appears not to have been altogether satisfactory to the latter, who handed it over to his uncle John. Dr. Hunter left an annuity of £100 to his sister, Mrs. Baillie, for life, and £2000 to each of her daughters. Dr. Baillie was his residuary legatee.
The name of John Hunter recalls the glories of a great medical school, the labours of an indefatigable dissector, the skill of a brilliant operating surgeon, and the formation of the noblest of the Hunterian museums, that of Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, the richest heritage of the London College of Surgeons. The youngest son of the same parents as William Hunter, John was the child of his father’s old age, the latter approaching seventy at John’s birth on February 13th, 1728. The father died when John was ten years old, and his mother appears to have been extremely indulgent to her youngest child, and so little controlled his desires for amusements that he left the local grammar-school almost destitute of classical knowledge, which formed, of course, the staple instruction there imparted. The imperfection of his general early education was a painful drawback to John Hunter all his life.
There is no doubt that when about seventeen John went to Glasgow on a visit to his sister, Mrs. Buchanan, whose husband, a cabinet-maker, was failing to get on in business, owing to his musical and social qualities. How far John took part in the business is not recorded, but it is likely that he owed much of his mechanical skill to what he learnt at the shop, which seemed to stick to him much more closely than any book-learning. Finding his efforts to relieve his sister from her difficulties ineffectual, he returned home to Long Calderwood. Mrs. Buchanan died in 1749.
We have extremely little knowledge of the workings of John Hunter’s mind in his youth, or how far he was conscious of the great talents that were awaiting the appropriate incentive. His being much given to country amusements is all that we know. At length he tired of having no profession, and his brother William’s success attracted him to London. He begged that he might pay a visit to him, and be his assistant in anatomy, if possible. The request being acceded to, John arrived in London in September 1748, was at once set to work upon a dissection of the muscles of the arm to illustrate his brother’s lectures, and succeeded beyond expectation. He was now established in his brother’s dissecting-room in the winter, and in the summer attended Chelsea Hospital under Cheselden. It was evident that John had found an occupation suited to his capabilities, and in his second season he was placed in full charge of the pupils in the dissecting-room, while Dr. Hunter almost confined himself to his lectures. In 1751 John became a pupil at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, where Percival Pott was then a leading surgeon. In 1754 he was entered as a surgeon’s pupil at St. George’s Hospital, where a chance of a surgeoncy was more likely than at St. Bartholomew’s. In 1756 he was for some months house-surgeon at St. George’s.
Between these two last dates he became temporarily resident at Oxford, where his name was put down at St. Mary’s Hall, June 5, 1755. Probably the idea was that he should become a physician, taking an Oxford degree in medicine; but he was in no humour “to stuff Latin and Greek at the University;” and he never conquered his aversion to classics. Long afterwards he wrote: “Jesse Foot[12] accuses me of not understanding the dead languages; but I could teach him that on the dead body which he never knew in any language dead or living.” The last entry of charges for battels against John’s name in the buttery-book of St. Mary’s Hall occurs on July 25, 1755, so that he probably resided less than two months. His name was kept on the books, however, till December 10, 1756.
The only variation we hear of in his constant round of work was a visit John paid to his home in 1752. In 1755 John was admitted to a certain degree of partnership in Dr. Hunter’s lectures; besides undertaking a definite part of the course, he was to supply his brother’s place when absent on professional engagements. This was a serious source of discomfort; the younger Hunter’s defective education here became prominent. We may take a description of his style of lecturing at a later period from his avowed enemy, Foot, but it will be well to deduct one half from it as the product of animosity. “In the beginning, these lectures were written on detached pieces of paper; and such was the natural confusion of his mind, that he would be frequently found incapable of explaining his own opinions, from his notes; and after having in vain tried to recall the transitory ideas, now no longer floating in the mind, nor obedient to the will—after having in vain rubbed up his face, and shut his eyes, to invite disobedient recollection—he would throw the subject by, and take up another.”
Meanwhile, passing laborious days in the dissecting-room, John was becoming a more perfect anatomist than his brother, and began making discoveries on his own account, some of which William demurred to at first, but usually accepted and brought forward in his lectures, giving John credit for them. Among other discoveries of this time may be mentioned that of the ramifications of the nerves of smell in the nose, the unravelling of branches of the fifth nerve, previously unknown, the tracing of the arteries in the gravid uterus, and the existence of lymphatic vessels in birds. Other discoveries made by John Hunter are described in William Hunter’s Medical Commentaries. But it soon appeared that the younger brother felt he did not receive a due share of praise and acknowledgment of his labours, while the elder considered every discovery made in his dissecting-room as more or less his property. John continued to dissect “with an ardour and perseverance of which there is hardly any example. His labours were so useful to his brother’s collection, and so gratifying to his disposition, that although in many other respects they did not agree, this simple tie kept them together for many years” (Sir E. Home).