A History of Science, vol 4 by Henry Smith Williams (the two towers ebook .TXT) 📕

advice of the surgeon William Cullen he turned his attention to

the study of medicine. His first attempt at teaching was in 1746,

when he delivered a series of lectures on surgery for the Society

of Naval Practitioners. These lectures proved so interesting and

instructive that he was at once invited to give others, and his

reputation as a lecturer was soon established. He was a natural

orator and story-teller, and he combined with these attractive

qualities that of thoroughness and clearness in demonstrations,

and although his lectures were two hours long he made them so

full of interest that his pupils seldom tired of listening. He

believed that he could do greater good to the world by “publicly

teaching his art than by practising it,” and even during the last

few days of his life, when he was so weak that his friends

remonstrated against it, he continued his teaching, fainting from

exhaustion at the end of his last lecture, which preceded his

death by only a few days.

For many years it was Hunter’s ambition to establish a museum

where the study of anatomy, surgery, and medicine might be

advanced, and in 1765 he asked for a grant of a plot of ground

for this purpose, offering to spend seven thousand pounds on its,

erection besides endowing it with a professorship of anatomy. Not

being able to obtain this grant, however, he built a house, in

which were lecture and dissecting rooms, and his museum. In this

museum were anatomical preparations, coins, minerals, and

natural-history specimens.

Hunter’s weakness was his love of controversy and his resentment

of contradiction. This brought him into strained relations with

many of the leading physicians of his time, notably his own

brother John, who himself was probably not entirely free from

blame in the matter. Hunter is said to have excused his own

irritability on the grounds that being an anatomist, and

accustomed to “the passive submission of dead bodies,”

contradictions became the more unbearable. Many of the

physiological researches begun by him were carried on and

perfected by his more famous brother, particularly his

investigations of the capillaries, but he added much to the

anatomical knowledge of several structures of the body, notably

as to the structure of cartilages and joints.

In Abbot Islip’s chapel in Westminster Abbey, close to the

resting-place of Ben Jonson, rest the remains of John Hunter

(1728-1793), famous in the annals of medicine as among the

greatest physiologists and surgeons that the world has ever

produced: a man whose discoveries and inventions are counted by

scores, and whose field of research was only limited by the

outermost boundaries of eighteenth-century science, although his

efforts were directed chiefly along the lines of his profession.

Until about twenty years of age young Hunter had shown little

aptitude for study, being unusually fond of out-door sports and

amusements; but about that time, realizing that some occupation

must be selected, he asked permission of his brother William to

attempt some dissections in his anatomical school in London. To

the surprise of his brother he made this dissection unusually

well; and being given a second, he acquitted himself with such

skill that his brother at once predicted that he would become a

great anatomist. Up to this time he had had no training of any

kind to prepare him for his professional career, and knew little

of Greek or Latin—languages entirely unnecessary for him, as he

proved in all of his life work. Ottley tells the story that,

when twitted with this lack of knowledge of the “dead languages”

in after life, he said of his opponent, “I could teach him that

on the dead body which he never knew in any language, dead or

living.”

By his second year in dissection he had become so skilful that he

was given charge of some of the classes in his brother’s school;

in 1754 he became a surgeon’s pupil in St. George’s Hospital, and

two years later house-surgeon. Having by overwork brought on

symptoms that seemed to threaten consumption, he accepted the

position of staff-surgeon to an expedition to Belleisle in 1760,

and two years later was serving with the English army at

Portugal. During all this time he was constantly engaged in

scientific researches, many of which, such as his observations of

gun-shot wounds, he put to excellent use in later life. On

returning to England much improved in health in 1763, he entered

at once upon his career as a London surgeon, and from that time

forward his progress was a practically uninterrupted series of

successes in his profession.

Hunter’s work on the study of the lymphatics was of great service

to the medical profession. This important net-work of minute

vessels distributed throughout the body had recently been made

the object of much study, and various students, including Haller,

had made extensive investigations since their discovery by

Asellius. But Hunter, in 1758, was the first to discover the

lymphatics in the neck of birds, although it was his brother

William who advanced the theory that the function of these

vessels was that of absorbents. One of John Hunter’s pupils,

William Hewson (1739-1774), first gave an account, in 1768, of

the lymphatics in reptiles and fishes, and added to his teacher’s

investigations of the lymphatics in birds. These studies of the

lymphatics have been regarded, perhaps with justice, as Hunter’s

most valuable contributions to practical medicine.

In 1767 he met with an accident by which he suffered a rupture of

the tendo Achillis—the large tendon that forms the attachment of

the muscles of the calf to the heel. From observations of this

accident, and subsequent experiments upon dogs, he laid the

foundation for the now simple and effective operation for the

cure of club feet and other deformities involving the tendons.

In 1772 he moved into his residence at Earlscourt, Brompton,

where he gathered about him a great menagerie of animals, birds,

reptiles, insects, and fishes, which he used in his physiological

and surgical experiments. Here he performed a countless number of

experiments—more, probably, than “any man engaged in

professional practice has ever conducted.” These experiments

varied in nature from observations of the habits of bees and

wasps to major surgical operations performed upon hedgehogs,

dogs, leopards, etc. It is said that for fifteen years he kept a

flock of geese for the sole purpose of studying the process of

development in eggs.

Hunter began his first course of lectures in 1772, being forced

to do this because he had been so repeatedly misquoted, and

because he felt that he could better gauge his own knowledge in

this way. Lecturing was a sore trial to him, as he was extremely

diffident, and without writing out his lectures in advance he was

scarcely able to speak at all. In this he presented a marked

contrast to his brother William, who was a fluent and brilliant

speaker. Hunter’s lectures were at best simple readings of the

facts as he had written them, the diffident teacher seldom

raising his eyes from his manuscript and rarely stopping until

his complete lecture had been read through. His lectures were,

therefore, instructive rather than interesting, as he used

infinite care in preparing them; but appearing before his classes

was so dreaded by him that he is said to have been in the habit

of taking a half-drachm of laudanum before each lecture to nerve

him for the ordeal. One is led to wonder by what name he shall

designate that quality of mind that renders a bold and fearless

surgeon like Hunter, who is undaunted in the face of hazardous

and dangerous operations, a stumbling, halting, and “frightened”

speaker before a little band of, at most, thirty young medical

students. And yet this same thing is not unfrequently seen among

the boldest surgeons.

Hunter’s Operation for the Cure of Aneurisms

It should be an object-lesson to those who, ignorantly or

otherwise, preach against the painless vivisection as practised

to-day, that by the sacrifice of a single deer in the cause of

science Hunter discovered a fact in physiology that has been the

means of saving thousands of human lives and thousands of human

bodies from needless mutilation. We refer to the discovery of the

“collateral circulation” of the blood, which led, among other

things, to Hunter’s successful operation upon aneurisms.

Simply stated, every organ or muscle of the body is supplied by

one large artery, whose main trunk distributes the blood into its

lesser branches, and thence through the capillaries. Cutting off

this main artery, it would seem, should cut off entirely the

blood-supply to the particular organ which is supplied by this

vessel; and until the time of Hunter’s demonstration this belief

was held by most physiologists. But nature has made a provision

for this possible stoppage of blood-supply from a single source,

and has so arranged that some of the small arterial branches

coming from the main supply-trunk are connected with other

arterial branches coming from some other supply-trunk. Under

normal conditions the main arterial trunks supply their

respective organs, the little connecting arterioles playing an

insignificant part. But let the main supply-trunk be cut off or

stopped for whatever reason, and a remarkable thing takes place.

The little connecting branches begin at once to enlarge and draw

blood from the neighboring uninjured supply-trunk, This

enlargement continues until at last a new route for the

circulation has been established, the organ no longer depending

on the now defunct original arterial trunk, but getting on as

well as before by this “collateral” circulation that has been

established.

The thorough understanding of this collateral circulation is one

of the most important steps in surgery, for until it was

discovered amputations were thought necessary in such cases as

those involving the artery supplying a leg or arm, since it was

supposed that, the artery being stopped, death of the limb and

the subsequent necessity for amputation were sure to follow.

Hunter solved this problem by a single operation upon a deer, and

his practicality as a surgeon led him soon after to apply this

knowledge to a certain class of surgical cases in a most

revolutionary and satisfactory manner.

What led to Hunter’s far-reaching discovery was his investigation

as to the cause of the growth of the antlers of the deer. Wishing

to ascertain just what part the blood-supply on the opposite

sides of the neck played in the process of development, or,

perhaps more correctly, to see what effect cutting off the main

blood-supply would have, Hunter had one of the deer of Richmond

Park caught and tied, while he placed a ligature around one of

the carotid arteries—one of the two principal arteries that

supply the head with blood. He observed that shortly after this

the antler (which was only half grown and consequently very

vascular) on the side of the obliterated artery became cold to

the touch—from the lack of warmth-giving blood. There was

nothing unexpected in this, and Hunter thought nothing of it

until a few days later, when he found, to his surprise, that the

antler had become as warm as its fellow, and was apparently

increasing in size. Puzzled as to how this could be, and

suspecting that in some way his ligature around the artery had

not been effective, he ordered the deer killed, and on

examination was astonished to find that while his ligature had

completely shut off the blood-supply from the source of that

carotid artery, the smaller arteries had become enlarged so as to

supply the antler with blood as well as ever, only by a different

route.

Hunter soon had a chance to make a practical application of the

knowledge thus acquired. This was a case of popliteal aneurism,

operations for which had heretofore proved pretty uniformly

fatal. An aneurism, as