Hunter is, by the common consent of all his successors, the greatest man that ever practised surgery. Considered merely as a surgeon, and with reference only to the direct improvements which he effected in its practice, he stands inferior to few : his improvement of the ooeration for aneurism was undoubtedly the most brilliant discovery in surgery of his century. He first described the important disease of inflammation of the veins; be first published lucid views on the venereal disease ; and by his work on inflammation improved the modes of practice applicable to nine-tenths of the diseases which fall within the province of the surgeon. But it was less by individual discoveries than by the general tone of scientific investigation which he gave to surgical practice that he improved it. Before his time surgery had been little more than a mechanical art, somewhat dignified by the material on which it waa employed. Hunter first made it a science, and by pointing out its peculiar excellence as affording visible examples of the effects and progress of disease, induced men of far higher attainments than those who had before practised it to make It their study.
Aa an anatomist and physiologist, his museum alone is sufficient to show that he has had no superior; and while his published works confirm this opiuion, and exhibit what he knew, they add to the regret that eo much more should have been lost. Every year, as his museum Is more closely studied, proves that Hunter had been well aware of facts for the discovery of which other observers have since his death received the honour. His remarks on fossil bones, for example, evince his knowledge of the principle carried out by Cuvier, by which their investigation might be made the clue to the history of LI former world.
His notices, though short, of monstrosities prove that he knew the fact that they are, as it were, representations of the natural form of animals lower in the scale of creation, and possess the form natural to themselves at an earlier period of development, a law since more fully demonstrated by Geoffrey St. Hilaire, Heckel, Von Baer, ka ; and it is now certain, from the drawings whioh he had made from his preparations, that he was well acquainted with nearly the whole of that most interesting department of physiology which relates to the development of the embryo. The number of individual fact, for the discovery of whioh be has lost hie due honour by the destruction of his manuscripts, cannot now be calculated.
As a natural historian, Hunter's merits were of no ordinary character, as is sufficiently shown by his descriptions of various animals from Now South Wales, published in Mr. White's 'Voyage' to that country, and by his papers on the wolf, &c. He seems however to have regarded the study of zoology as very inferior to that of physiology, and it is probable that tho large collection of animals which he left preserved in spirit was only intended as a store of subjects for future dissection.
The whole of John Hunter's works have been edited in 4 vols. 8vo by Mr. James F. Palmer, who has added to those published by himself numerous papers from different periodicals, his surgical lectures, from notes taken by some of his pupils, and his Croonian Lectures. Bio graphies of Hunter have been written by Sir Everard Home, Mr. Jesse Foote, and Dr. Adams. A life by Mr. Drewry Ottley is prefixed to Mr. Palmer's edition of his works.