Hunter, John, 1728-1793, anatomist and surgeon

William Hunter (1718-1783) had opened his school of anatomy in Covent Garden in 1745, and his brother John joined him as his apprentice in 1748. John attended William Cheselden's surgical practice at Chelsea Hospital during 1749-1750 and in 1751 he became an apprentice at St Bartholomew's Hospital under the surgeon Percival Pott. In 1754 he entered St George's Hospital as a surgeon's pupil and was appointed House Surgeon in 1756, but resigned the post after only five months. He was elected to the surgeoncy of St George's in 1767.

When St George's Hospital had opened in 1733, six physicians and three surgeons had been appointed as the medical officers and were permitted a small number of students who accompanied them on the wards or attended operations. The fees collected from these pupils were pooled between the medical officers but there was no general teaching or lectures. Hunter attempted to formalise the teaching and invited all pupils to attend his surgical lectures and his brother William's anatomical lectures at the School of Anatomy in Great Windmill Street, opened by that William in 1768. In 1783 John suggested that St George's should have its own medical school run along the same lines as the Guys' Hospital school, with each of the St George's surgeons giving six lectures annually, though his colleagues rejected the idea. An acrimonious conflict developed between Hunter and his peers at St George's on the instruction of pupils. At a board meeting on 16 Oct 1793 during the discussion of the issue, Hunter suffered a fit of apoplexy leading to his death.

Hunter's pupils revolutionised medicine in the first half of the 19th century. These included Edward Jenner, renowned for his work in vaccinating against Smallpox, and Everard Home, Hunter's brother-in-law, who gave the first recorded lecture in St George's in 1803.