In 1750, he obtained the degree of M. D. from the uni versity of Glasgow. At this time, he quitted the family of Mrs Douglas, and took a house for himself in Jermyn Street. In the summer of 1751, he paid a visit to his mo ther and other relations in Scotland, where he had an op portunity of exchanging congratulations with Dr Cullen, who was now, like himself, rising into eminence, and was established as a physician and professor in Glasgow.
In 1755, he was made physician to the British hospital on the resignation of Dr Layard, was admitted li centiate of the college of physicians, and soon after became a member the medical society of London. He publish ed, in the Observations and Inquiries of this body, a history of an aneurism of the aorta.
Dr Hunter turned his extensive practice to very eminent account, by adding to the pathological and medical know ledge of the age. He had the inerit of first explaining the nature of the disease called retroversio uteri, and distin guishing it from other diseases with which it had been con founded ; he explained the texture of the cellular mem brane, and the pathology of anasarca and emphysema ; he also threw much light on the subjects of ovarian dropsy, diseases of the heart and stomach, and hernia. For his papers on these and many other subjects, we refer to his Medical Commentaries.
In 1762, he was consulted during the pregnancy of the queen, and in two years after was appointed physician-ex traordinary to her Majesty. In 1767, he became a fellow of the Royal Society, and enriched their Transactions with his learned observations on the bones of animals found on the banks of the river Ohio, and on the rock of Gibraltar.
He, after this, became engaged in some personal disputes with the present Dr Monro, senior, of Edinburgh, on their contending claims to priority in anatomical discoveries. This contest became keen, and was enlivened with wit and pleasantry' ; but probably more was lost by the irritation which it created, than was in any respect gained by either party. A man, in defending his own claims, is tempted to expose defect which tends to shake the general cre dit due to his adversary, and the feelings which are most profitable and becoming for men of liberal pursuits are ex tinguished. Those are happiest who feel no temptation to enter on such controversies, or who, if accidentally betray ed into them, soon perceive their pernicious tendency, and in good time relinquish them. The subjects of dispute
were indebted to both of these celebrated anatomists, but they both had been anticipated in some of their boasted dis coveries by Haller, in others by Nougnez. The principal of them were the origin and uses of the lymphatics ; the possibility of injecting the epididymis, and the excretory ducts of the lacrymal gland.
In 1768, Dr was elected a member of the Socie ty of Arts, and was appointed anatomical professor to the Royal Academy of Arts. By now applying his anatomical knowledge to the elucidation of painting and statuary, he displayed in a new field the versatility and extent of his genius. In 1781, he was unanimously elected to succeed Dr John Fothergill as president of the London Medical Society. In the same year, the Royal Medical Society .of Paris elected him one of their foreign associates ; and, in 1782, he received a similar mark of honour from the Royal Academy of Sciences of Paris.
Dr Hunter's most distinguished publication was his Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus, which he began in 1751 ; but, from his great ambition to give it in the most complete state, he delayed to publish it till 1775.
In consequence of a memoir read by Mr John Hunter in 1780 to the Royal Society on the functions of the placen ta, Dr Hunter was led into another keen dispute with this eminent man and near relation, in which he claimed, with considerable warmth, the share of merit which belonged to himself in the discovery. He seems to have perceived that he carried these disputes too far. They promoted an irritability of temper, which must have created to him much uneasiness ; and it was remarked by those who oc casionally conversed with him on professional subjects, that sometimes, when an organ or function was barely men tioned which had been the subject of a dispute, he broke out into a torrent of abuse of the knavery of his adversary. In the supplement to the first part of his Commentaries, he excuses his polemical appearances by representing enthu siasm as necessary to promote the sciences, and observing, that no man had ever been a great anatomist who had not been engaged in some violent dispute.