A surgical history

One cannot imagine how he got everything done. [Wendy Moore] takes us through his life in 18th-century London with clarity, outstanding research and an eye to the zest for life that Hunter had. Happily married to Anne Home after a seven-year engagement, Hunter moved his household several times, along with his collection of dissections, specimens and live and stuffed animals. They settled finally in 1783 in 28 Leicester Square, a very fashionable address. Distinctly unfashionable but directly behind was 13 Castle Street, a situation that allowed the dissection rooms, the collection, the specimens and the museum to be joined to the family home. This schizophrenic building was well suited to the family and its many enterprises. Anne's salon, Georgian society and private patients entered the front door on Leicester Square, while resurrection men with bodies for dissection, animals of all shapes and sizes and other unmentionables arrived at the back door on Castle Street. Moore opens our eyes to the intellectual ferment and excitement of the Enlightenment as the artists Reynolds, Stubbs, Gainsborough and Copley, the writers Boswell, Johnson and Pepys, and the great scientists of the era pass through Hunter's door on Leicester Square. The dark, seamier side of 18th-century London entered at night on the Castle Street side. Hunter's best-known student was Edward Jenner, who "walked the wards alongside the hospital's most controversial surgeon, imbibed his iconoclastic views on treating patients, assisted as his 'dresser' in the operating theatre, and helped him in the dissecting room." They had a close relationship. As Moore explains, "It was Hunter's doctrine - of observation, experiment and application - Jenner would faithfully follow when ... he tested the smallpox vaccine." Hunter was ahead of his time in surgical technique and decision-making, the concept of evidence-based practice, life-long learning, medical education, translational research and meritocratic administration.