Taxidermy: John Hunter

p56 From Stuffed Animals and Pickled Heads, The Culture and Evolution of Natural History Museums

In 1793 the extremely industrious curioso John Hunter died, leaving an unprecedented collection of 13,687 painstakingly prepared biological specimens. The Collection was purchased by the British government and entrusted to the Royal College of Surgeons as a national treasure in 1799. The Hunterian collection is one of the most scientifically important and aesthetically unusual museums in the world.

John Hunter was born near Glasgow in 1728, and in 1748 he followed his brother William to London, where they set up a private anatomy school in Covent Garden. At the school, John did the grunt work of preparing specimens for his brothers lectures, but his skills very quickly advanced to the level of art. John was a genius at dissection and preparation.

In 1761, during the Seven Years' War, Hunter was posted to Belle Ile, off the north coast of France, as an army surgeon. Between savaging people's lives and amassing research on surgery for gunshot wounds, he developed a treatise on geological formations and palaeontology. When Hunter returned to London he began his own anatomical school, practiced surgery on the side, and was elected a facet of natural history, and he procured many exotic specimens, eventually arranging the collection along theoretical principles for teaching purposes. Hunter's research became widely respected, landing him appointment as surgeon extraordinary to the king (1776); membership in the Royal Society of Gothenburg (1781), the Royal Society of Medicine of Paris (1783), and the American Philosophical Society (1787); and appointment as the surgeon general to the army (1790).

Hunter correctly diagnosed himself as suffering from arterial disease, and he occasionally suffered attacks of angina. Adjacent to his consulting room he kept a couch where he could repose when he felt an attack approaching, and he frequently told his friends that his life was in the hands of any rascal who chose to irritate him.