to the first volume of his ‘Lectures on Comparative Anatomy,’ 1814.
Home was a good practical surgeon, and was genuinely attached to the study of comparative anatomy. His earlier papers, published in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ were of considerable value, and he often delivered the Croonian lecture before the Royal Society, but in his later years the Society printed many insignificant or worthless papers by him.
The great blot upon Home's memory is his destruction of Hunter's manuscripts. Shortly before the Hunterian collection was delivered to the College of Surgeons in 1800, Home had the many folio volumes and fasciculi of manuscripts containing descriptions of the preparations, and of investigations connected with them, conveyed by William Clift [q. v.], the curator, to his own house. For many years afterwards the college begged Home to produce the catalogue, which, refusing the co-operation of others, he promised to draw up unaided; but a synopsis only was printed in 1818. Meanwhile Home was more or less using these manuscripts in preparing his numerous papers for the Royal Society (see Sir B. C. Brodie, Autobiography, pp. 163–5). In July 1823 Home told Clift that he had destroyed Hunter's papers, and had almost set fire to his house in the process. Clift, in his evidence in 1834 before the parliamentary committee on medical education, said that he knew Home had used these papers very largely in writing the third volume of his ‘Comparative Anatomy.’ Home alleged that Hunter, when he was dying, ordered him to destroy these papers, but this was impossible, as Home was not present, and he had admittedly kept the papers thirty years after Hunter's death. Clift further testified that he had frequently transcribed parts of Hunter's original papers and drawings into the papers which were to appear in Home's own name. Some few portions of the manuscripts which escaped destruction were afterwards recovered [see Hunter, John].
Besides over one hundred papers in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ some of which were reprinted separately, Home wrote: 1. ‘A Dissertation on the Properties of Pus,’ London, 1788, 4to. 2. ‘A short Account of the Life of John Hunter, prefixed to Hunter's Treatise on the Blood, Inflammations, and Gunshot Wounds,’ London, 1794, 4to. 3. ‘Practical Observations on the Treatment of Strictures in the Urethra and in the Œsophagus,’ London, 1795; 2nd edit., vol. i. 1797, vol. ii. 1803, vol. iii. 1821, the latter volume containing also an account of gouty attacks on the urethra, and a new mode of performing the high operation for stone; 3rd edit. of vol. i., 1805. 4. ‘Practical Observations on the Treatment of Ulcers on the Legs, considered as a branch of Military Surgery,’ London, 1797, 8vo; 2nd edit., enlarged, 1801. 5. ‘Observations on Cancer, connected with Histories of the Disease,’ London, 1805, 8vo. 6. ‘J. Hunter's Treatise on the Venereal Disease,’ edited by Sir E. Home, London, 1810, 4to. 7. ‘Practical Observations on the Treatment of the Diseases of the Prostate Gland,’ vol. i. 1811, vol. ii. 1818, London, 8vo. 8. ‘Lectures on Comparative Anatomy, in which are explained the Preparations in the Hunterian Museum,’ London, 4to, 1814, vol. i. text, vol. ii. plates, from drawings by W. Clift; these lectures were delivered in 1810 and 1813. Vols. iii. (text) and iv. (plates), containing lectures delivered in 1822, were published in 1823, with many microscopical drawings by Bauer, and anatomical drawings by Clift; vols. v. and vi. (supplementary), published in 1828, contain additional researches. Although this work is without system or true scientific insight, it is still of interest as containing many of the results of Hunter's investigations. 9. ‘On the Formation of Tumours, and the peculiarities in the Structure of those that have become Cancerous, with their Mode of Treatment,’ London, 1830, 8vo.
[Gent. Mag. October 1832, vol. cii. pt. ii. p. 384; English Encyclopædia, Supplement, 1872; Home's Life of John Hunter, 1794; Ottley's Life of Hunter, 1835; Sir W. Jardine's Life of John Hunter (Naturalist's Library, x. 78–80); W. Clift's evidence before the parliamentary medical committee, Lancet, 11 July 1835, pp. 471–6, 488, 489; Sir B. C. Brodie's Autobiog., 1865, passim; Brodie's Hunterian Oration for 1837; Hunter's Posthumous Essays and Observations, copied by W. Clift, and arranged and revised by Sir R. Owen, 2 vols. 8vo, London, 1861, with appendix by W. Clift. See also Jesse Foot's Review of Home's Practical Observations on the Prostate Gland, London, 1812; Thomas Whately's Observations on Home's Treatment of Strictures of the Urethra, London, 1801.]
HOME, FRANCIS (1719–1813), professor of materia medica at Edinburgh, third son of an advocate residing at Eccles, Berwickshire, was born on 17 Nov. 1719. He studied medicine at Edinburgh University, and was one of the founders of the Royal Medical Society there. From 1742 to 1748 he served as surgeon of dragoons in Flanders in the seven years' war, studying at Leyden during the intervals of the campaigns. Leaving the army, he graduated M.D. at Edinburgh in 1750, with a treatise on intermittent fever, and became a fellow of the Edinburgh College
