tarians of the benefits they had so long enjoyed from Lady Hewley's charity. Mr. Hunter died, after two years of great suffering;, in London, May 9th, 1861.—R. H.
HUNTER, Walter, a Scottish mechanical engineer, was born at Newbattle in Midlothian in the year 1772, and was the son of a carpenter and maker of agricultural implements. He learned the business of a millwright in the works of Messrs. Moodie. Having been sent by them to Nottingham in 1792 to fit up some machinery, he obtained an engagement in the Soho works there. He soon afterwards went to London, and was there engaged as a foreman by John Rennie. His first attempt to set up in business for himself at Dartford proved unfortunate, and he returned for a time to the condition of a journeyman; but in 1807 or 1808, in partnership with William English, he established a machine-work at Bow which proved perfectly successful, especially in the manufacture of hydraulic machinery, iron bridges, and lock-gates. He died on the 8th of February, 1852, in the eightieth year of his age.—(Proc. Inst. Civ. Eng., 1852-53.)—W. J. M. R.
HUNTER, William, M.D., one of the best anatomists and most distinguished and philosophic accoucheurs of his age. He was an elder brother of John Hunter, and had he no other claims upon posterity, it would be sufficient distinction to be known as having been his preceptor in anatomy, and first patron. Long Calderwood in the parish of Kilbride, in Lanarkshire, was a small estate which had been for some time in the possession of the Hunter family, and here he was born in the year 1718. At the age of fourteen he was sent by his parents to the university of Glasgow, where it appears he pursued the usual studies with diligence and success, obtaining the esteem of both professors and fellow-students. By his father he was intended for the church; but after five years' study at the college, his mind became embued with what he thought conscientious scruples at subscribing to the articles of faith. In this state of hesitation he became acquainted with the celebrated Dr. Cullen, afterwards professor of medicine in the university of Edinburgh; but who at this period was practising his profession as surgeon at Hamilton. A friendship between the two young men was immediately formed; and Cullen's persuasion coming to the aid of Hunter's own views, he determined to abandon the church, and take to medicine as his profession. His father having given his consent to this change of profession, in 1737 he went to reside with Dr. Cullen. He remained with him for three years, the three happiest years in his life, he used to say afterwards; and at the end of that time a partnership was formed between them. It was part of their agreement that William Hunter should take care of the surgical, and Cullen the medical cases that occurred in their practice, and that each should alternately pass a winter at some large medical school, while the other remained to take charge of the patients. It was otherwise destined, however, and this partnership soon terminated. It was arranged that Hunter should first proceed to Edinburgh, and then to London, for the purpose of pursuing his medical studies, and that he should then return to Hamilton. In November, 1740, he accordingly repaired to Edinburgh, where he passed the winter attending the lectures of the celebrated Dr. Monro and other professors; and in the spring of 1741 he proceeded to London. Here he took up his abode with Dr. Smellie the celebrated accoucheur, attending likewise the anatomical class of Dr. Frank Nicholls, and studying surgery at St. George's hospital. The well-known printer, Mr. Foulis of Glasgow, had given him a letter of introduction to Dr. Douglas, at that time a practitioner of eminence in London, and who was engaged on a great anatomical work on the bones. Recognizing Hunter as an acute observer, and a young man of industry and ability, he at once invited him to his house, and obtained his consent to become his assistant in his dissections, and a teacher for his son. The situation thus opened to him was so advantageous that Dr. Cullen readily consented, with a view to forward his friend's advancement, to cancel the articles of partnership, and leave him free to pursue the path which now promised to lead him to fame and fortune. He was thus enabled to take advantage of the means of instruction which surrounded him, and to pursue his studies with assiduity. He soon became such an expert dissector, that his liberal patron. Dr. Douglas, went to the expense of having several of his preparations engraved. He lost this kind friend, however, in the spring of 1742, but continued to reside for several years afterwards in his family, which consisted of his widow and two children, attending as before to the education of the latter. He published in the following year, in the Transactions of the Royal Society, his first essay "On the Structure and Diseases of Articulating Cartilages;" and patiently prepared himself by diligent study and making numerous preparations for giving lectures on anatomy. A good opportunity for this was not very long in offering itself. Mr. Samuel Sharpe had for some time been giving a course of lectures on operative surgery to a society of naval surgeons, which at that period existed, and who had rooms in Covent Garden. Finding this to interfere too much with his other engagements, he resigned in favour of William Hunter, who embraced the opportunity, and gave his first course of lectures in 1746. His success as a lecturer was so great, that the members of this society requested him to extend his course to anatomy, and gave him the free use of their rooms. Thus commenced that brilliant career which he was soon after destined to follow. In 1747 he was admitted a member of the College of Surgeons, and after the close of his lectures in the spring of the following year, he set out with his pupil, Mr. James Douglas, on a tour to the continent; visiting particularly the schools of Leyden and Paris. Although up to this time Hunter practised surgery as well as midwifery, he had always preferred the latter, and after his return to London, being appointed a surgeon accoucheur to the Middlesex hospital, he determined to confine himself to that particular branch of the profession. In this practice he was eminently successful, as his manners and address were extremely conciliating and engaging, and his reputation as an anatomist encouraged a belief that his minute knowledge of the human frame, would necessarily give him great command in cases of danger and difficulty. In 1750 he obtained the degree of M.D. from the university of Glasgow; and in 1762 when the queen became pregnant, he was consulted on the occasion. In 1764 he was appointed physician extraordinary to her majesty. His time had now for some time past been so completely occupied with the duties and labours of his practice, that he had been compelled to take a partner to assist him in his anatomical lectures and dissections. His brother John, who had for some years filled this situation, when he went abroad was succeeded by Mr. Hewson; and he again after some time was succeeded by Mr. Cruickshank. Honours now rapidly followed. In 1767 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. In 1768 he became a fellow of the Society of Arts, and at the institution of the Academy was appointed by his majesty professor of anatomy. In 1781 he was unanimously elected successor to Dr. Fothergill, as president of the Royal College of Physicians of London; and in 1782 he was elected a foreign associate of the Royal Academy of Sciences in Paris. Honoured by the esteem of his sovereign, complimented by foreign academies, consulted by persons of all ranks, and possessor of a large fortune, he was nevertheless subjected to severe illness arising chiefly from gout; and after suffering for some time, he succumbed to a severe attack, and died on the 30th March, 1783, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. On his deathbed he remarked to his friend Mr. Combe—"Had I strength enough to hold a pen, I would write how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die." His body was interred in the rector's vault of St. James' church, Westminster.
Dr. Hunter's published works are not very numerous; but in addition to his essay mentioned above, read before the Royal Society, on the structure and diseases of the articulating cartilages, in which he threw considerable light upon a subject that had not been hitherto sufficiently studied, he was the author of several essays in the Philosophical Transactions and Medical Observations. The most important are those relating to his discovery of varicose aneurism, on the origin and use of the lymphatics, on retroversion of the uterus, and on the membrana decidua reflexa. Some related to subjects connected with natural history; as, for instance, a paper on some fossil bones from the Ohio, in which he showed, chiefly from the structure of the teeth, that they belonged to a large extinct animal different from the elephant, with which they had previously been confounded; a description of the nyl-ghau, a kind of antelope peculiar to India, &c. In 1762 he published his "Medical Commentaries," a work in which he vigorously asserted his claim to priority in making several anatomical discoveries, over that of Dr. Monro secundus, professor of anatomy at Edinburgh. But his great work, and that upon which his fame chiefly rests, is his "Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus." This work engaged his attention
