John Hunter—Surgeon and Resuscitator

Abstract

Fig. 1. John Hunter—a painting by Reynolds. Reproduced by kind permission of the President and Council of the Royal, College of Surgeons of England. Hunter and several medical friends stood ready. A bed had been prepared, a fire had been lit, medicines were lined up and a pair of bellows was placed at the ready. As minutes ticked by, Hunter waited anxiously for the arrival of the coach bearing the lifeless body of the curate that he fully intended to revive from the dead. If anyone could do it, John Hunter could. From humble beginnings on his family’s farm in lowlands Scotland, Hunter had risen to become one of the most popular and controversial surgeons of his day. Having skipped schooling, hated all learning and left formal education at the age of 13, the wayward youth had idled his days on the farmstead until a sudden impulse sent him to London at the age of 20 to work for his elder brother William at his new anatomy school in Covent Garden. Working side-by-side with William for the next 12 years, John Hunter relentlessly explored human anatomy in the bodWhen the former king’s chaplain, the Rev William Dodd, s w a h e w p J t ies of men, women and children bought or stolen from the g a v t