Volume 4

The works of John Hunter ... with notes / Edited by James F. Palmer. [With life and bibliography of Hunter by D. Ottley].

  • Hunter, John, 1728-1793
Date:
1835-1837
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The works of John Hunter ... with notes / Edited by James F. Palmer. [With life and bibliography of Hunter by D. Ottley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    24/572 (page 4)
    series of prep<arations in his imiseuin, lie boldly states with refer- ence to the structure of the organ of hearing in fish, that it is “ only a link in the chain of varieties displayed in the formation of this organ of sense in different animals, descending from the most perfect to the most imperfect in a regular progres- sion.” The importance of these views, and the nature and amount of the knowledge which they indicated, could not be appre- ciated by the contemporaries of Hunter in the absence of a detailed exjiosition of the evidences on which they were founded. It is no wonder, therefore, that we find his earlier eulogists sometimes founding his claims to scientific eminence on insecure grounds; some, for example, lauding him as the author of a theory of the organizing energy, which may be traced to the time of Aristotle, or as the originator of the doctrine of the vitality of the blood, which is supported with so much elocjuence by Harvey and his immediate successors; while others, taking more definite grounds, have often unfor- tunately selected as his discoveries ])recisely those subjects of Hunter’s special researches in which he had but revived and extended the ideas of his jiredecessors. Of this we have a striking example in the introductory observations on the character of Hunter contained in Sir Everard Home’s Lec- tures on Comparative Anatomy, vol. i. j). 6, in which the inde- pendent function of the vesiculae seminales and the determina- tion of the organ of hearing in fishes are adduced as Hunterian discoveries. The true originators of these and of other ideas and facts w'hich Hunter may have regarded as his discoveries, and wdiicli he doubtless did discover so far as independent and original research constitutes a claim to that honour, 1 have been careful to point out in every case where my reading has led me to de- tect in an older author a clear anticipation of Hunter. It cannot be doubted, however, that the ascription to Hunter, by his friends and admirers, of facts and opinions to which he had no title as the original discoverer, must have contributed to low^er his character in the estimation of continental anato- mists ; whose acquaintance with the vast accumulation of facts in comparative anatomy due to the labours of the numerous