Hunter, John, 1728-1793

English physician.

John Hunter (1728-1793), surgeon, anatomist, and Fellow of the Royal Society who published several treatises on medical subjects, including one on inflammation and gunshot wounds. His anatomical and natural science collections form the core of the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow.

Scottish surgeon and anatomist.

Letter from John Hunter, to Sir Joseph Banks, President of the Royal Society, sending him a paper on the natural history of bees and expressing the hope that it would be included in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

John Hunter was a British anatomist and surgeon, born in Scotland.

Hunter studied both human and comparative anatomy, helped by his older brother, William, a noted surgeon and lecturer in anatomy, who sponsored his training in London. From 1761 to 1763, during the last years of the Seven Years' War, Hunter worked as an army surgeon. In London, Hunter set up a surgical practice and continued the research and experiments he had begun in the army. He made the acquaintance of many scientists, published a large number of papers, and established a medical museum and a student society, the Lyceum Medicum Londinense. In 1783 he was made a member of the Académie royale de chirurgie, and in 1790 became Surgeon General, among many other honors and appointments. After his death, in 1799, his collection of over 14,000 items was purchased by the government and given to the care of the Royal College of Surgeons, where parts of it still exist as the Hunterian Collection of the college's museum. It was housed in a new building in Lincoln's Inn Fields, officially opened in 1813.

Anne Home was an author and poet. She was the daughter of an army surgeon, and the sister of artist Robert Home. She married John Hunter in 1771.