John Hunter
By Illa Vij

JOHN HUNTER, a brilliant surgeon, made himself immortal by his exceptional skill in medicine. The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, and his accomplishments in the field of pathology keeps him alive in the minds of doctors all over the world. John Hunter, born in 1728, on a farm near Glasgow, was the youngest of 10 children. While two of his older brothers, William and James, were promising students, the family did not expect anything special from John. He disliked school and studying, was irritable by temperament and grew up to be rebellious and uneducated. The only thing that interested him was nature. He loved watching birds, ants, bees, etc. He wanted to know more about clouds and why leaves changed colour in autumn. But nobody bothered to nurture or satisfy his curiosity. While John simply idled away his childhood, his brother William, 10 years older than him, became one of the leading surgeons and anatomists in London.

At the age of 20, John went to his brother to be his assistant. Much against William’s expectations, John took up the work with great enthusiasm and soon became an expert at dissecting bodies of dead persons. He worked

carefully with the muscles, blood vessels and voluntarily worked till late in the night. He had finally found what he could master. During that time, it was legal to dissect bodies of executed criminals and those who committed suicide. But the supply of bodies was very limited and anyway they were only supplied to public institutions and colleges. The private anatomical schools like those of William Hunter had to look for illegal operators, who dug out bodies from graves and sold then to the doctors. John met and struck deals with such ‘body snatchers’.

John studied surgery at St. George’s Hospital and soon joined the staff, as he was a bright student and quick learner. He treated patients with an aim to learn more and more. He concentrated on comparative anatomy i.e. the study of the same organs in various species of animals.

In 1763, John returned to London and set up his own practice. His reputations built up fast, and most of what he earned went into further research work. He built a house in the suburbs which he filled with a menagerie of beasts like leopards, jackals and zebras. His friends sent him whichever animal they could possibly find. King George III gifted him an elephnt! Most people began considering him an eccentric, yet students flocked to hear his lectures. He strongly recommended that surgery should be used only when all other treatments failed. He wrote A Treatise, on Venereal Diseases and A Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation and Gunshot Wounds. The latter was published in 1794, a year after his death.

John Hunter’s pupil Edward Jenner was so inspired by his teacher to be patient, accurate and persistent that he spent many years in research and finally discovered the small-pox vaccine.

John Hunter died in 1793. He earned a lot through his practice, but since a major portion of his money flowed into research, he died in debt. His accomplishments were so vast that a historian claimed," When we make a discovery in pathology, we only learn what we have overlooked in his writings or forgotten in his lectures".

The giant skeleton

The skeleton of a giant who stood 236 cm tall, met John Hunter in London. The giant, Charles Byrne, was an Irishman. He had come to London with a travelling circus. Hunter told him that giants had a short life and since his body had ‘scientific value,’ he would like to dissect it after he had died. The frightened and shocked giant fled from Hunter but Hunter kept a track of him. Soon Charles fell ill and he made his undertaker promise him that he would sink his body in a lead-lined coffin off the Thames estuary. Medical students began working out methods of recovering the body, but Hunter had already bribed the body watchers. He smuggled the massive body to his own museum. The skeleton can still be seen in the Hunterian Museum.