HUNTER, WILLIAM (I ), British physiologist and physician, the first great teacher of anatomy in England, was born on May 23, 1718, at East Kilbride, Lanark. He was the seventh child of his parents, and an elder brother of the still more famous John Hunter (q.v.). He was educated at Glasgow uni versity, and then studied medicine under William Cullen at Ham ilton. He then studied in Edinburgh and at St. George's hospital, London. In 1746 he lectured on operative surgery for a society of naval practitioners and won a great reputation for the fullness and thoroughness of his teaching. Little by little Hunter renounced surgical for obstetric practice, in which he excelled. He was appointed a surgeon-accoucheur at the Middlesex hospital in 1748, and at the British Lying-in hospital in 1749. He built a house, with lecture and dissecting-rooms, in Great Windmill street, whither he removed in 1770. Here was accommodated his collec tion, comprising anatomical and pathological preparations, ancient coins and medals, minerals, shells and corals. The whole collec tion, together with his fine library and an endowment of 18,000, by his will became, after the lapse of 20 years, the property of the University of Glasgow, where the collection may still be seen.
Hunter made several contributions to the Medical Observations and Enquiries and the Philosophical Transactions. In his paper on the structure of cartilages and joints, published in the latter in 1743, he anticipated what M. F. X. Bichat 6o years afterwards wrote concerning the structure and arrangement of the synovial membranes. His Medical Commentaries (pt. i., 1762, supple mented 17 64) contains, among other like matter, details of his unseemly disputes with the Monros as to who first had success fully performed the injection of the tubuli testis (in which, how ever, both he and they had been forestalled by A. von Haller in 1745), and as to who had discovered the true office of the lym phatics, and also a discussion on the question whether he or Percivall Pott ought to be considered the earlier to have eluci dated the nature of hernia congenita, which, as a matter of fact. had also been previously explained by Haller. In the Commen taries is exhibited Hunter's one weakness—an inordinate love of controversy. In 1762 he was consulted by Queen Charlotte, and in 1764 was made physician-extraordinary to her Majesty. His great work, The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus, exhibited in Figures, was published in His posthumous works are Two Introductory Lectures (1784) , and Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (1794), which was re-edited by Dr. Rigby in 1843. Hunter was never married, and was a man of frugal habits. He was an early riser, and a man of untiring in dustry. He is described as being in his lectures, which were of two hours' duration, "both simple and profound, minute in dem onstration, and yet the reverse of dry and tedious"; and his mode of introducing anecdotal illustrations of his topic was most happy. Lecturing was to him a pleasure, and, notwithstanding his many professional distractions, he regularly continued it, because, as he said, he "conceived that a man may do infinitely more good to the public by teaching his art than by practising it." His great work, The Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus, was published in 1774. His posthumous works are Two Introductory Lectures (1784), and Anatomical Description of the Human Gravid Uterus (I794)• See Gent. Meg. liii. pt. 1, p. 364 (1783) ; S. F. Simmons, An Account of the Life of W. Hunter (1783) ; Adams's and Ottley's Lives of J. Hunter; Sir B. C. Brodie, Hunterian Oration (1837) ; W. Munk, The Roll of the Royal College of Physicians of London, ii. 205 (1878).