by Tessa Harris
John Hunter died in 1793 after an attack of angina, brought on by a particularly heated meeting with the board of St. George’s Hospital regarding various reforms he wished implemented. He was also betrayed by his brother-in-law, another surgeon, named Everard Home, who either plagiarized or destroyed much of his writing. Jesse Foot published his scurrilous biography in 1794.
Hunter’s remains lay forgotten in the vaults of the church of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, off what is now Trafalgar Square, London, until a young army surgeon discovered them in 1859 and had them reinterred to the north nave of Westminster Abbey. Three years later the Royal College of Surgeons affixed a plaque. Part of the inscription reads: The Royal College of Surgeons of England has placed this tablet on the grave of Hunter to record admiration of his genius, as a gifted interpreter of the Divine power and wisdom at work in the laws of organic life and its grateful veneration for his services to mankind as the founder of scientific surgery.
Glossary
Chapter 1
St. Bride’s: The church itself was designed by Sir Christopher Wren. When in 1764 its steeple was struck by lightning, Benjamin Franklin was asked to design a lightning conductor for it, but there was a row between the inventor and King George III as to the shape of the ends of the rods. The king finally won the day, much to the delight of the British press, which praised their sovereign as “good blunt honest George” while Franklin was described as “a sharp-witted colonist.”
sack ’em up men: The London anatomist Joshua Brookes refused to pay a retainer to a gang of resurrectionists and found a rotting corpse on his doorstep. His neighbors were so scandalized that they almost beat him to death.
grave-clothes: Thanks to a quirk of English law, to steal a shroud or a coffin was considered a crime against the property of a dead man’s heirs and subject to stiff punishment, and even hanging, but a man did not own his own body.
Leicester Fields: John Hunter’s premises spanned an area between what is now Leicester Square and what used to be Castle Street. The strange configuration of the premises, with two distinct entrances, one where polite society entered and the other where corpses were brought at night, is believed to have inspired Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Hunter moved there in 1783. He is also believed to have been the model for Mary Shelley’s Victor Frankenstein.
measured the length: Anatomists would pay resurrectionists for a corpse by measurement. A child would be priced around a guinea while an adult might fetch four guineas. (A guinea was twenty-one shillings.)
Chapter 2
Count Josef Boruwlaski (1739–1837) was born in Poland. He measured only twenty-five inches. He toured Europe and ended up living in Durham, England, where there is a life-size statue of him. In England he enjoyed the patronage of the fashionable Duchess of Devonshire. It is not known how he came by his title. showman: Joe Vance was also Charles Byrne’s agent.
Giant Byrne: Charles Byrne sometimes used the stage name O’Brien to link him with a long line of giants descended from Brian Boru, the legendary nine-foot-tall Irish king.
The Phoenix: A lugger that was wrecked off Newquay, Cornwall, in 1781. didicoys: Gypsies.
Chapter 3
The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser: Published from April 27, 1764, until November 1796.
St. George’s Hospital: Originally where the Lanesborough Hotel stands today, it was at Hyde Park Corner. The location was chosen because it was in the countryside, where the air was cleaner.
Gunning, Keate, and Walker: John Gunning bore a grudge against John Hunter, believing he was better qualified for a post at St. George’s Hospital. Thomas Keate was Gunning’s assistant. William Walker was one of Gunning’s surgical colleagues.
St. James’s Church: In Jermyn Street, just off Piccadilly, it was designed by Sir Christopher Wren and was once the most fashionable church in London.
Lord North: The first British prime minister forced out of office by a motion of no confidence. He resigned in March 1782 because of the British defeat at Yorktown the year before.
cock’s comb: John Hunter conducted several experiments on living animals. Samuel Johnson was one of the few thinkers of the day who condemned such cruelty.
William Hunter: John Hunter’s elder brother, he established himself as an anatomist in London years before.
addressed a skeleton: Although most of John Hunter’s lectures were well attended, he sometimes struggled to attract an audience and reportedly addressed a skeleton.
Chapter 4
old Araby: An archaic reference to the Arabian Peninsula.
ring from Marie Antoinette: Count Boruwlaski relates the episode in his memoirs when one of Maria Theresa’s children gave him a diamond ring. Legend has it that the child was the young Marie Antoinette (then called Maria Antonia). However, there is a discrepancy with the dates and, as all the daughters of the empress had the first name Maria, the count was probably confused.
Kings of Ireland: There was a great blurring of lines between Irish myth and fact when it came to tales of past leaders.
St. Giles: The area in London most associated with an Irish population during the eighteenth century, with many engaged in seasonal labor and street selling. It was also one of the most depraved areas of the city with regular murders, rapes, illegal gambling, and cockfighting.
rookeries: The slum houses were called “rookeries” because the name suggested people were packed into nests.
Chapter 5
coach from London to Oxford: From 1671 there was a daily coach service from London to Oxford during the summer. The coach left at six A.M. from Thomas More’s house near All-Souls College in Oxford and arrived in London later the same day. In London it left from the Saracens Head on Snow Hill.
a Negro slave with a rare skin condition: In 1792 a freed black man named Henry Moss started to turn white and began exhibiting himself. He became a sensation. He suffered from vitiligo, a condition in which skin cells fail to produce melanin.
a white woman without arms or legs: The records of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts show that Sarah Rogers exhibited a landscape painting in 1811.
Count Boruwlaski wrote an autobiography: Memoirs Of Count Boruwlaski.
St. Bartholomew’s Fair: A charter fair that ran from 1133 to 1855, when it was suppressed because of the lewd behavior it encouraged.
lodgings: While Charles Byrne did lodge at Cockspur Street, near Trafalgar Square, the count had lodgings nearby at 55 Jermyn Street, just opposite Hunter’s house at the time, courtesy of Georgiana the Duchess of Devonshire, who was his patron.
Spring Gardens: A short street ’round the corner from Cockspur Street.
Lincoln’s Inn: One of four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong.
Chapter 6
control nature itself: Hunter conducted several experiments on cross-breeding and successfully mated a cow with a buffalo belonging to the Marquis of Rockingham.
Anne Hunter: John Hunter’s wife was a minor poet and librettist. Her social literary parties were renowned at the time.
Franz Joseph Haydn: The Austrian composer visited London twice, but not until the 1790s. He did work on librettos with Anne Hunter during this time.
Chapter 7
the white death: Many names were given to tuberculosis. Others included consumption and phthisis (Greek for “consumption”).
Candlemas: A Christian feast day in February, marking the presentation of Jesus in the Temple.
Chapter 8
linkmen: Men who held lanterns to guide travelers through the streets.
footpads: Highway robbers who worked on foot rather than on horseback.
Ben Crouch: A former porter at Guy’s Hospital, he was also a prizefighter. He was described as “a powerful, overbearing man with a pockmarked face and filthy temper.” He had risen to command the notorious London Borough Gang “because he was of superior intelligence and did not get drunk as often as the others.” (Co
le, H., Things for the Surgeon. London: Heineman, 1964.)
Jack Hartnett: Crouch’s accomplice who, on his death, left an estate of £6,000.
St. Martin-in-the-Fields: The church was opened on Christmas Day 1733 and remains very little altered by Trafalgar Square.
John Howison: A shadowy figure who conducted various nefarious duties for both William and John Hunter.
Chapter 9
Knipe brothers: Identical twins born in 1761 in Ireland, they both measured seven feet two inches. They exhibited themselves in London in April 1785.
knobbed whelk (Busycon carica gmelin): Designated by New Jersey as the official state shell in 1995.
ear horn: The first stethoscope was not invented until 1816 by René Laennec in France.
Galen: A Roman gladiatorial surgeon (130–200 A.D.), who was the first to recognize that pus from wounds inflicted by the gladiators heralded healing (pus bonum et laudabile [“good and commendable pus”]).
bloodletting: Many Georgians, whether ill or not, routinely asked to be bled. As much as thirty ounces of blood would be taken at a time.
Everard Home: John Hunter’s brother-in-law and one of his pupils. He was quick to betray him after his death.
educated in the classics: John Hunter’s brother William sent him to St. Mary Hall, within Oriel College, Oxford, but he left after only two months.
Chapter 10
Dr. James Graham (1745–1794): He was a charlatan and a pioneer in sex therapy. At his Temple of Health and Hymen, housed in a magnificent building at London’s Adelphi, “maidens” would perform educative sex acts and his electrical apparatus supposedly encouraged fertility.
celestial bed: The huge, elaborate bed had a tilting inner frame that supposedly put couples in the best position to conceive. Dr. Graham gave Charles Byrne a personal invitation to try it out, although this was declined. One newspaper stated Byrne declared himself to be “a perfect stranger to the rites and mysteries of the Goddess Venus.”
red and white striped pole: The modern barber pole originated in the days when bloodletting was one of the principal duties of the barber. The two spiral ribbons painted around the pole represent the two long bandages, one twisted around the arm before bleeding and the other used to bind it afterward. giving clysters: To give an enema.
Act of Parliament: In 1745 the Company of Barber-Surgeons was dissolved when the surgeons split from the barbers to form the Company of Surgeons.
nasal polyps: Haydn suffered from nasal polyposis for much of his adult life; this was an agonizing and debilitating disease in the eighteenth century, and at times it prevented him from writing music.
white lead powder: By now many women were no longer wearing the heavy white-lead makeup used since Elizabethan times.
Hanover Square Rooms: Also known as the Queen’s Concert Rooms and opened in 1741, these were London’s main assembly rooms established principally for musical performances.
Chapter 11
a salty pearl: Bladder stones, although sometimes confused with kidney stones, were very common in the eighteenth century, especially among those with diets high in animal protein. Diarist Samuel Pepys underwent the operation to remove the stones, known as a lithotomy, in 1658. The surgeon at St. Thomas’s Hospital removed a stone “the size of a tennis ball.” Pepys, of course, survived.
Chapter 12
liable to swing: Up until 1832, stealing a corpse was only a misdemeanor at common law, not a felony, and was therefore only punishable with fine and imprisonment, rather than transportation or execution.
lain with a child virgin: It was a common belief that sex with a child cured venereal disease.
Covent Garden or Haymarket: These areas were particularly noted for prostitution. An estimated 63,000 prostitutes lived in London in the 1700s, making a staggering one in five women “whores.”
syphilis: It is widely believed that the disease was first brought to Europe by the returning crewmen from Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century.
mercury that poisoned the blood: The mercuric chloride used to treat syphilis was so toxic that it sometimes poisoned its users and the symptoms were confused with those of the disease it was supposed to treat.
study the disease in depth: Hunter wrongly believed syphilis and gonorrhea were manifestations of different symptoms of the same sexual illness. An entry in his copious notes implies that he did, indeed, infect himself.
lancet: Used to prick the skin, the word is derived from a lance once carried by knights in the fifteenth century.
Chapter 13
half crown: Two shillings and six pence.
Lincoln’s Inn Archway: Built in 1697, it is one of three principal entrances to the Inn and leads to New Square.
a pantomime: Harlequin Teague; or, The Giant’s Causeway ran for nearly a month at the Haymarket Theatre.
King’s Bench: Around 60 percent of those sentenced to death in the eighteenth century were pardoned.
troubles over the years: The relationship between Irish Catholics and the ruling English Protestant government had long been difficult. Political power rested in the hands of Anglo-Irish settler-colonials, while Catholics were penalized.
Chapter 14
Haydn chased by Dr. Hunter: An account of the episode was given by Haydn himself. He wrote: “It seemed to me that he pitied me for not wanting to undergo the happy experience of enjoying his skill.”
Italian states: Before 1851 the country of Italy did not exist. Instead the area was made up of several principalities.
Chapter 15
menagerie at the Tower of London: The first guidebook to the Tower was published in 1741. Animals listed included the lions Marco and Phillis and their son Nero.
Signor Carlo Cappelli: The most famous castrato of the day was Carlo Maria Broschi, known on the stage as Farinelli (1705–1782). He was one of the greatest singers in the history of opera.
your knife into that young singer: In 2006 the exhumation and examination of Farinelli’s remains were carried out by the Centro Studi Farinelli, an independent society in Bologna, with the aim of learning more about the physique and physiology of a castrato.
Chapter 16
Westminster coroner: In Westminster, a district of London, the coroner was appointed by the Dean and Chapter of Westminster Abbey.
It was furnished comfortably: Wardrobes did not come into fashion until the nineteenth century. Clothes were usually laid flat in drawers.
an alum block: Used by barbers as an astringent after shaving, the block, which was usually mixed with potassium, also acted as a blood coagulant.
Chapter 17
Bologna and Rome: There were several communities of castrati living in and around Bologna, Rome, Naples, and Venice at the time.
philandering: The celebrated castrato Venanzio Rauzzini (1746–1810) was chased out of the courts of Europe for his sexual antics with noblewomen. He settled in Bath, England.
Chapter 18
physician to the queen: Although no man-midwife was allowed to attend Queen Charlotte, William Hunter examined several royal babies shortly after birth, as well as looking after the recovering mother.
The Royal Society: Founded in 1660, with King Charles II’s approval, it was a group of eminent scientists and philosophers, including Sir Christopher Wren and Robert Hooke.
