The Hunterian oration for the year 1907 : being the sixty-third Hunterian oration since its foundation, delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons / by Henry T. Butlin on the objects of Hunter's life and the manner in which he accomplished them.

  • Butlin, Henry T. (Henry Trentham), 1845-1912.
Date:
1907
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Hunterian oration for the year 1907 : being the sixty-third Hunterian oration since its foundation, delivered in the theatre of the Royal College of Surgeons / by Henry T. Butlin on the objects of Hunter's life and the manner in which he accomplished them. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    To many persons at this time Hunter’s life must have appeared to be a gigantic failure. He had written books and papers which few people cared to read and fewer still could understand. He had been so poor a teacher that, while Desault in Paris gathered round him 400 students, Hunter’s class seldom num¬ bered more than twenty. He had spent all his spare time and ruined his health in making a collection which he declared had cost him £70,000, and no one thought it worth the having. Although he was regarded for some years as the first surgeon in London, his position had not been recognised by the State. Indeed, many members of his own profession regarded him with distrust; they thought him too subject to fancies and theories; he was changeable knew him to be capable of keeping her and himself in comfort, if he only chose to apply himself to the work which properly belonged to him. In the same manner, Mrs. Hunter must have been aware that her own life might have been much happier if her husband had been less devoted to his scientific studies, and she was probably equally con¬ scious of the fact that she and her children would be without means after Mr. Hunter’s death, for his spare income was applied to the needs of his museum. Nor could it have been an easy matter to live with a man of so irritable and passionate a disposition as her husband. Nevertheless, she proved herself, in many respects, worthy of the position she had accepted. After Hunter’s death she became com¬ panion to two young ladies, and continued in that humble position until her death. She appears to have had a profound belief in the genius of her husband, for, some time after his death, she was anxious to erect a monument to his memory in Westminster Abbey, but the fees demanded for permission to occupy a niche there were too extravagant for her reduced condition, and she was forced to abandon the idea. To my mind she deserves more notice than has been taken of her, both for her own abilities and for her devotion to her husband during his life and after his death.