HUNTER, doilx (1728-93). A celebrated English physiologist and surgeon, horn at Long t'alderwood, Glasgow, Scotland, the youngest of ten children. After a deficient primary educa tion he was apprenticed to a. cabinet-maker; but in 1748 he began to make up deficiencies in his eduention• and applied himself to anatomy under his brother's tuition. Ife studied under Chosel at Chelsea Hospital. and under Pott between 1749 and 1753. and at Oxford front 1753 to 1751; became a hospital pupil in surgery in 1754. and was made house surgeon at Saint George's Hospital in 1756. He joined the Army as staff surgeon, serving in France and Portugal from 1761 to 1763; practiced surgery in London from 1763; was made a Fellow of the Royal So ciety in 1767; became surgeon to Saint George's Hospital in 1768; surgeon extraordinary to the king in 1776; and deputy surgeon-general to Army in 1786. He received the Copley medal from the 'Royal Society in 1787. Ile was a man of great industry, the boldest and best operative surgeon of his day, as well as the greatest anatomist known. and a marvelous zoologist.
He invented the process of tying an artery on the cardiac side for cure of aneurism. His mu seum contained at the time of his death 10,563 specimens and preparations illustrative of hu man and comparative anatomy, physiology, pathology, and natural history. He died in comparative poverty, and his collection was pur chased, two years after his death, by the Govern ment for £15,000, and was presented to the Royal College of Surgeons. In addition to numerous papers contributed to the Transactions of the Royal and other learned societies, he published the following independent works: A Treatise on the History of the Human Teeth (Part 1. 1771; Part 11. 1778) ; A Treatise on the Vene real Disease (1786) ; Observations on Certain Parts of the Animal Economy (17S6) : and .t Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun shot Wounds (1794). Consult Palmer, The Works of John Hunter, F.R.S., with, Notes (4 vols., London, 1838). To this is prefixed The Life of John Hunter, F.R.S., by Otley.