William Hunter (anatomist)
Encyclopedia
William Hunter FRS (23 May 1718 – 30 March 1783) was a Scottish anatomist and physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...

. He was a leading teacher of anatomy, and the outstanding obstetrician
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the medical specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children during pregnancy , childbirth and the postnatal period...

 of his day. His guidance and training of his ultimately more famous brother, John Hunter
John Hunter (surgeon)
John Hunter FRS was a Scottish surgeon regarded as one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day. He was an early advocate of careful observation and scientific method in medicine. The Hunterian Society of London was named in his honour...

, was also of great importance.

Early life and career

He was born at Long Calderwood - now a part of East Kilbride
East Kilbride
East Kilbride is a large suburban town in the South Lanarkshire council area, in the West Central Lowlands of Scotland. Designated as Scotland's first new town in 1947, it forms part of the Greater Glasgow conurbation...

, South Lanarkshire
South Lanarkshire
South Lanarkshire is one of 32 unitary council areas of Scotland, covering the southern part of the former county of Lanarkshire. It borders the south-east of the city of Glasgow and contains many of Glasgow's suburbs, commuter towns and smaller villages....

 - the elder brother of John Hunter
John Hunter (surgeon)
John Hunter FRS was a Scottish surgeon regarded as one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day. He was an early advocate of careful observation and scientific method in medicine. The Hunterian Society of London was named in his honour...

. After studying divinity at the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...

, he went into medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....

 in 1737, studying under William Cullen
William Cullen
William Cullen FRS FRSE FRCPE FPSG was a Scottish physician, chemist and agriculturalist, and one of the most important professors at the Edinburgh Medical School, during its heyday as the leading center of medical education in the English-speaking world.Cullen was also a central figure in the...

.

Arriving in London, Hunter became resident pupil to William Smellie
William Smellie (obstetrician)
William Smellie was a Scottish obstetrician.He practiced medicine before getting a licence, but enrolled later at the University of Glasgow and received his M.D. degree in 1745. After training in obstetrics in London and Paris, he opened a practice in London and began teaching...

 (1741–44) and he was trained in anatomy
Anatomy
Anatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy , and plant anatomy...

 at St George's Hospital
St George's Hospital
Founded in 1733, St George’s Hospital is one of the UK's largest teaching hospitals. It shares its main hospital site in Tooting, England with the St George's, University of London which trains NHS staff and carries out advanced medical research....

, London, specialising in obstetrics
Obstetrics
Obstetrics is the medical specialty dealing with the care of all women's reproductive tracts and their children during pregnancy , childbirth and the postnatal period...

. He followed the example of Smellie in giving a private course on dissecting, operative procedures and bandaging, from 1746. His courtly manners and sensible judgement helped him to advance until he became the leading obstetric consultant of London. Unlike Smellie, he did not favour the use of forceps in delivery. Stephen Paget
Stephen Paget
Stephen Paget was an English surgeon, the son of the distinguished surgeon and pathologist Sir James Paget. Stephen Paget has been long credited with proposing the "seed and soil" theory of metastasis, even though in his paper “The Distribution Of Secondary Growths In Cancer Of The Breast”, The...

 said of him:
"He never married; he had no country house; he looks, in his portraits, a fastidious, fine gentleman; but he worked till he dropped and he lectured when he was dying."


To orthopaedic surgeons he is famous for his studies on bone and cartilage. In 1743 he published the paper On the structure and diseases of articulating cartilages - which is often cited - especially the following sentence: “If we consult the standard Chirurgical Writers from Hippocrates down to the present Age, we shall find, that an ulcerated Cartilage is universally allowed to be a very troublesome Disease; that it admits of a Cure with more Difficulty than carious Bone; and that, when destroyed, it is not recovered”

Later career

In 1764, he became physician to Queen Charlotte
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz
Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was the Queen consort of the United Kingdom as the wife of King George III...

. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society
Royal Society
The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

 in 1767 and Professor of Anatomy to the Royal Academy
Royal Academy
The Royal Academy of Arts is an art institution based in Burlington House on Piccadilly, London. The Royal Academy of Arts has a unique position in being an independent, privately funded institution led by eminent artists and architects whose purpose is to promote the creation, enjoyment and...

 in 1768.

In 1768 he built the famous anatomy theatre and museum in Great Windmill Street
Great Windmill Street
Great Windmill Street is a thoroughfare running north-south in Soho, London, England. It is dissected by Shaftesbury Avenue. The street took its name from the windmill on the site which was first recorded 1585 and was demolished during the 1690s...

, Soho
Soho
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable...

, where the best British anatomists and surgeons of the period, including his brother John, were trained. His greatest work was Anatomia uteri umani gravidi [The anatomy of the human gravid uterus exhibited in figures] (1774), with plates engraved by Rymsdyk (1730–90), and published by the Baskerville Press
John Baskerville
John Baskerville was an English businessman, in areas including japanning and papier-mâché, but he is best remembered as a printer and typographer.-Life:...

. He chose as a model for clear, precise but schematic illustration of anatomic dissections the drawings by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...

 conserved in the Royal Collection at Windsor
Windsor Castle
Windsor Castle is a medieval castle and royal residence in Windsor in the English county of Berkshire, notable for its long association with the British royal family and its architecture. The original castle was built after the Norman invasion by William the Conqueror. Since the time of Henry I it...

: Kenneth Clark
Kenneth Clark
Kenneth McKenzie Clark, Baron Clark, OM, CH, KCB, FBA was a British author, museum director, broadcaster, and one of the best-known art historians of his generation...

 considered him responsible for the Eighteenth-century rediscovery of Leonardo's drawings in England.

To aid his teaching of dissection
Dissection
Dissection is usually the process of disassembling and observing something to determine its internal structure and as an aid to discerning the functions and relationships of its components....

, in 1775 Hunter commissioned sculptor
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...

 Agostino Carlini
Agostino Carlini
Agostino Carlini was an Italian sculptor and painter, who was born in Genoa but settled in England.He was also one of the founder members of the Royal Academy in 1768...

 to make a cast of the flayed but muscular corpse of a recently executed criminal, a smuggler. He was professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy of Arts in London from 1769 until 1772. He was interested in arts, and had strong connections to the artistic world.

In 1770 he built himself a house in Glasgow fully equipped for the practice of his science, and this formed the nucleus of the University of Glasgow
University of Glasgow
The University of Glasgow is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Located in Glasgow, the university was founded in 1451 and is presently one of seventeen British higher education institutions ranked amongst the top 100 of the...

's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery
Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery
The University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery is the oldest public museum in Scotland. It is located in various buildings on the main campus of the University in the west end of Glasgow.-History:...

.

It has been alleged that Hunter (and his brother John) were involved with either commissioning the murder or showing a callous disregard for where his corpses came from (and his former tutor William Smellie
William Smellie (obstetrician)
William Smellie was a Scottish obstetrician.He practiced medicine before getting a licence, but enrolled later at the University of Glasgow and received his M.D. degree in 1745. After training in obstetrics in London and Paris, he opened a practice in London and began teaching...

). The supporting evidence for this theory includes the large number of pregnant corpses Hunter was able to obtain, although Hunter did provide case histories for at least four of the subjects illustrated in The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus Exhibited in Figures, published in 1774.

An avid coin and book collector

William Hunter was an avid antique coin collector and the Hunter Coin cabinet in the Hunterian Museum is one of the world's great collections. According to the Preface of Catalogue of Greek Coins in the Hunterian Collection (Macdonald 1899), Hunter purchased many important collections, including those of Horace Walpole and the bibliophile Thomas Crofts
Thomas Crofts
The Reverend and Learned Thomas Crofts FRS FSA was a British bibliophile, Anglican priest, Fellow of the Royal Society and European traveller.- Early life :Thomas was born in Monmouth, Wales and was the son of John Crofts...

. King George III even donated an Athenian gold piece.

When the famous book collection of Anthony Askew
Anthony Askew
Anthony Askew was an English physician and book collector.-Life and work:Askew was born in Kendal, Westmorland, the son of Dr. Adam Askew, a well-known physician of Newcastle. His early education was at Sedbergh School and The Royal Free Grammar School in Newcastle upon Tyne, where by all accounts...

, the Bibliotheca Askeviana, was auctioned off upon Askew's death in 1774, Hunter purchased many significant volumes in the face of stiff competition from the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

.

He died in 1783, aged 64, and was buried in London at St James's, Piccadilly.

See also

  • Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery
    Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery
    The University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery is the oldest public museum in Scotland. It is located in various buildings on the main campus of the University in the west end of Glasgow.-History:...

  • Hunterian Collection
    Hunterian Collection
    The Hunterian Collection is one of the best-known collections of the University of Glasgow and is cared for by the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery and Glasgow University Library. It contains 650 manuscripts and some 10,000 printed books, 30,000 coins and 15,000 anatomical and natural history...

  • Hunter House Museum
    Hunter House Museum
    Hunter House Museum is a museum in East Kilbride, South Lanarkshire, Scotland.Hunter House is the original Long Calderwood Farm and may be the oldest extant building in East Kilbride....

    , his birthplace

External links

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