The Hunterian Oration on Hunter as the Founder of Scientific Surgery: Delivered at the Royal College of Surgeons of England on Tuesday, February 14th, 1899
Authors: W. Mac Cormac
Journal: BMJ (1899)

In accordance with the terms of a deed establishing the Hunterian Oration, we celebrate to-day John Hunter's name and fame.Born on the 14th of February in the year 1728 at Long Calderwood, a small estate his father farmed, some eight miles from Glasgow, he died on October i6th, I793, in his 65th year, celebrated alike as a great surgeon, a profound biologist, and a man of genius.It is fitting that this College, the heir to Hunter's great collection, should take care for his memory, and one way in, which this is done, however inadequately, is by means of the Hunterian Oration, delivered in this theatre in alternate years.Here, in view of this noble presentment of Hunter by' the foremost painter of his time, the orator is called upon to praise its foremost surgeon.Hunter was a bad sitter, and it' was almost by an accident that Reynolds obtained the oppor- tunity to paint this, one of his finest portraits.In the back- ground are indicated the bones of O'Brien the giant, whom Hunter affectionately calls his " tall man," a preparation;showing the vessels of the heart suggestive of his work on Aneurysm, and three volumes of his manuscript notes.As we look at the picture, painted in 1785, when Hunter was 57 years old, we perceive him in a deep reverie, in one of those waking dreams to which he refers in his lectures.He has paused from writing in order to think out some problem, and, as he often said, it was a delight to him to think.As we dwell upon the features, we cannot doubt that a sudden in- spiration has flashed upon and gradually pervaded his mind, some great scientific truth or generalisation which he has grasped and is pondering with intense satisfaction.Those eyes, full of the keenest intelligence, seem in eager quest of' something far beyond the visible tokens of his work.We may imagine Hunter trying, perchance, to solve some hidden mystery of life, or seeking to pierce the veil which hides from!us the great unknown beyond.Buckle calls Hunter a genius, whose only fault was an occa- sional obscurity in language and in thought.In his History! of Civilisation he writes thus: It sometimes seems as if Hunter's understanding were troubled by the grandeur of its own conceptions, and doubted the pa.th it ouglht to take.Still his powers were so extraordinary that among the great masters of .organicscience hie belongs to the same rank.as Aristotle.Harvey, and Biclhat, and is somewhat superior to Haller and Cuvier.What, then, was the manner of man whom Buckle thus cha-'racterises?I would desire to present him to you as a yet surviving influence, to recall his very words, and to show him to you as he lived.To appreciate, or even to fully comprehend, the labours of Hunter, one must strive to judge them from the standpoint of his lime, for in this way only can we form a just conception of their splendid superiorty.On Hunter's early life and the many moot points it involves -his preliminary education or the want of it, whether he was for a time a carpenter by trade, why he was not sent to learn the Humanities at Glasgow Opllege like his brothers, or why in later life he spent some time at Oxford University without any apparent appreciation of the academic learning there offered to him-I do not purpose to dwell.John Hunter was the youngest child of a family of ten, and the spoiled son of his mother.As a boy his pleasure was to ramble in the quiet woodlands, observe the ways of the living things he found there, to collect the eggs of birds, and compare them together."I wanted to know," he tells us, " all about the clouds and the grasses, and why the leaves change colour in the autumn; I watched the ants, bees, birds, tadpoles, and caddis worms; I pestered people with questions about what.nobody knew or cared anything about."I Hunter's scientific career dates from his arrival iti, London in I74., where, when 20 years of age, he joined ,hi's l*other William's school as an ill-educated youth, new to all the amenities of life, brusque in manner, and negligent In appearance, yet with a keen sense of physical enjoyment..As. a pupil he showed a marvellous aptitude for anatomy, and soon became a successful teacher of it, but ho always.remained a learner in that great book of Nature whibch was ever open before him, and whose pages, until he died 45 yeEir& later, he never ceased to turn, interpreting aright many -of its, obscurest passages.From the moment he began to work liisindustry was never-ceasing, his patience extraordinary,-and his capacity for unflagging effort so sustained that it brought, him step by step to a position which has earned for him-the -praise and admiration of his successors.In 1759, undermined in health by ten years of incessant toil, he contracted an attack of pneumonia, and his weakened constitution was threatened with phthisis.Recommended to' take rest, he only changed one sphere of activity for another, and having obtained through his brother's influence' an appointment as surgeon in the army, he sailed (I.76i)-with Keppel for Belleisle, and afterwards accompanied the expedition into Portugal.It was then that he studied the phases of inflammation and the treatment of gunshot wounds.