has been steadily increasing since that time.

WILLIAM HUNTER

William Hunter (1718-1783) must always be remembered as one of the
greatest physicians and anatomists of the eighteenth century, and
particularly as the first great teacher of anatomy in England; but his
fame has been somewhat overshadowed by that of his younger brother John.

Hunter had been intended and educated for the Church, but on the 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