John Hunter's Letters by WILLIAM RICHARD LEFANU, Librarian, Royal College of Surgeons of England, London W.C.2
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John Hunter's Letters By WILLIAM RICHARD LEFANU, Librarian, Royal College of Surgeons of England, London W.C.2 N EVER ask me what I have said or what I have written, but if you will ask me what my present opinions are, I will tell you," John Hunter once said to a pupil. Some of Hunter's 'present opinions,' the current thoughts which he wrote down with no inten- tion of publishing, can still be read in his letters. But his letters have to be looked for in a number of biographies and other books. When Hunter died in October 1793 he had published only a frac- tion of his work. One book which was ready for publication, A Treatise on the Blood, Inflammation, and Gun-sbot Wounds, was edited the next year by Everard Home, the brother-in-law who for nine years had been his private assistant. It is well-known that Home kept Hunter's other manuscripts for thirty years and then burnt them in 1823. The little that Home allowed to survive was garnered by William Clift and Rich- ard Owen and published piecemeal between 1830 and 1861, chiefly in the Catalogues of the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. Besides these papers of his own, many of Hunter's pupils had kept notes of his lectures, from which two versions of the Lec- tures on Surgery were published in 1833 and 1835. About the same time Hunter's letters began to be generally known. For the last twenty years of his life Hunter corresponded regularly with Edward Jenner, his favourite pupil, who had gone back to a country practice in Gloucestershire, and was not brought to London again by his discovery of vaccination till several years after Hunter's death. Jenner kept Hunter's letters carefully, and when he died in 1823, thirty years after Hunter, his friend John Baron made good use of them in the first volume of his Life of Edward Jenner, published in 1827. Baron too was a country practitioner in Gloucestershire, and he recalled how Jenner had often shown him the letters when speaking of his affection and admiration for "the dear man" John Hunter. Baron seems to have restored the letters to the Jenner family, all except one, still unpublished-that of 12 August 1793-which he only mentioned in the Life as Hunter's last letter to Jenner. It was found 'in Dr Baron's 449 450 WILLIAM R. LeFANU cupboard' by Miss Baillie, Hunter's great-niece, whose father Matthew Baillie had retired from the leading practice in London to Gloucester- shire where no doubt they came to know Baron. When a few years later Drewry Ottley was writing the "official" life of Hunter for the Works of Hunter published in 1835, he too had access to these letters and reprinted many that Baron had already published with some that Baron left out and more from other sources. Altogether Ottley printed fifty- two letters, of which forty-two are among the fifty-three printed by Paget in 1897; these remain the two largest collections of Hunter's letters in print. In one of his letters Hunter wrote to Jenner "Am I to refer to your letters?" and in another "I have all your letters before me," so that he seems to have kept the letters which Jenner wrote to him, but they had already disappeared when Baron was writing his Life of Jenner. Possibly they were destroyed when Hunter died, or perhaps Home burnt them with Hunter's own papers. Some of the letters printed by Baron and Ottley are not now known except from their books, and both men unfortunately shared the early nineteenth-century habit of "correcting" punctuation and spelling. Hun- ter did not trouble to date his private letters precisely, but there is no reason to quarrel with Ottley's arrangement of them in general. One of Jenner's nieces sold a large number of the letters to Sir James Paget, who presented them to the Royal College of Surgeons in 1877; Paget was the leading surgeon of the day and had made the catalogue of Hunter's pathological collections. His son Stephen Paget knew these autographs, but seems to have followed Ottley's text when reprinting the letters in his deservedly well-known life of Hunter, published in 1897. Stephen Paget also printed other letters of John Hunter's, in- cluding his early letters to his brother William from the Hunter-Baillie family collection, which is now at the Royal College of Surgeons. Other letters have been printed from time to time, and the manuscripts of several unpublished letters have been reported. John Hunter had a very large correspondence. Clift, who was his secretary in 1792-93, records that there must have been three or four thousand letters in that year. Besides the personal letters to friends, which Hunter wrote in his clear, strong hand, there were letters of pro- fessional advice to former pupils in the country, letters of patronage in his capacity as Surgeon General and Inspector General of Hospitals to the Army, testimonials, business letters, appointments, and perhaps most important to him letters seeking information or specimens for his scientific work and museum. Much of all this was dictated to one or another of Hunter's assistants and merely signed by Hunter; but Everard Home, whose hand was singularly like Hunter's own, wrote out JOHN HUNTER'S LETTERS 451 the more important wholly, including the signature "John Hunter"; there was also a special secretary for Army business. By a caprice of fortune the letter chosen as a sample of Hunter's hand for reproduction in the 1835 Works was one of those written for him by Home. It is disappointing in view of the volume of Hunter's correspondence that few more than one hundred letters are now known. Half of these however are the famous letters to Jenner, which Stephen Paget said "we seem to read over Jenner's shoulder." Absolutely informal-they begin 'Dear Jenner' and end 'Ever yours John Hunter'-they bring John Hunter to life as no other record can. The list which follows records all letters now known to me, indicat- ing both manuscript and printed sources. Besides acting as a guide to letters in print, I hope it will attract attention to other Hunter letters, and bring to light the lost autographs, perhaps, and others still un- known. JOHN HUNTER Chronological list of letters The references in column 4 are to page numbers Date To whom written Manuscript Printed text 11July 1761 William Hunter RCS Paget 72; Peachey 260 28 Sept. 1761 William Hunter RCS Paget 75; Peachey 261 23 March 1762 [William Hunter] Med. Times & Gaz., Lond. 1867, 1, 515 12 April 1762 William Hunter RCS Paget 76; Peachey 262 28 May 1762 William Hunter F. L. Pleadwell Med. Times & Gaz., Lond. 1867, 1, 516; Ann. M. Hist. 1936, n.s. 8, 562 6 June 1762 William Hunter RCS Paget 77; Peachey 263 25 July 1762 William Hunter RCS Paget 78; Peachey 264 [14 Sept. 1762) Lord Loudoun RCS 7 Oct. 1762 Lord Loudoun RCS 28 Oct 1762 Lord Loudoun Fenwick Beekman Ann. M. Hist. 1936, n.s. 8, 292 16 Nov. 1762 William Hunter RCS Paget 80; Peachey 265 17 Nov. 1762 Lord Loudoun RCS 13 Feb. 1763 Hugh Smyth Fenwick Beekman Ann. M. Hist. 1936, n.s. 8, 294 [28 March 1763) Colonel Cosnan RCS [21 July 1771) William Hunter RCS Paget 93; Peachey 154 [Before 1774) [ ? ) Ottley 52 [13 June 1773) Edward Jenner RCS Baron 28; Ottley 37; Paget 122 [15 June 1773) Edward Jenner RCS Baron 29; Ottley46;Paget 123 2 May 1774 Charles Hinchley RCS Bailey 1893, 14 24 May [1775) Edward Jenner G. Grey Turner Baron 32; Ottley 55; Paget 125; Peachey 160 2 August [1775) Edward Jenner RCS Baron 23; Ottley56;Paget 126 23 Nov. 1775 James Baillie RCS Paget 119 [1775 ? 3 Edward Jenner RCS Baron 31; Ottley 58; Paget 126 452 WILLIAM R. LeFANU Date Teo whom written 2Manuscript Printed text [10 Jan. 1776) Edward Jenner RCS Ottley 58; Paget 127 [22 Jan. ? 1776) Edward Jenner RCS Ottley 59; Paget 128 [c. Jan. 1776 ?) Edward Jenner RCS Baron 34; Ottley 59; Paget 129 [c. Jan. 1776 ?I Edward Jenner RCS Baron 30; Ottley 60; Paget 130 [12 Apr. 1777 ?] Edward Jenner RCS Ottley 61; Paget 131 [16 Apr. 1777 ?) Edward Jenner RCS Ottley 61; Paget 132 11 May 1777 Edward Jenner Baron 36; Ottley 62; Paget 132 6 July 1777 Edward Jenner RCS Baron 37; Ottley 63; Paget 133 6 Aug. 1777 Edward Jenner RCS Ottley 64; Paget 135 18 Edward Jenner Baron 40; Ottley 65; Paget [Aug. 1777) 135 6 Nov. 1777 Edward Jenner Ottley 66; Paget 136 23 Nov. [? 1777) Edward Jenner RCS Ottley 66; Paget 136 17 Dec. [? 1777] Edward Jenner Ottley 67; Paget 137 29 Mar. 1778 Edward Jenner RCS Baron 42; Ottley 67; Paget 138 [ca. 1778) Edward Jenner RCS Baron 34; Ottley 69; Paget 139 [ca. 1778) Edward Jenner RCS Ottley 69; Paget 140 30 Aug. [? 1778) Edward Jenner Ottley 70; Paget 141 25 Sept. 1778 Edward Jenner RCS Baron 51; Ottley 70; Paget 141 30 Oct. [? 1778) Edward Jenner RCS Paget 146 9 Nov. 1778 Edward Jenner RCS Baron 54; Ottley 71; Paget 142 21 Nov. [1778) Edward Jenner RCS Baron 44 16 Jan. 1779 Edward Jenner Baron 55; Ottley 74; Paget 143 [? winter 1778-79) Edward Jenner RCS Baron 55; Ottley 75; Paget 144 28 April [1779) Edward Jenner Baron 47 8 Nov.