This is a detailed study of the mouth, jaws and teeth with exceptionally accurate plates. Hunter correctly understood the growth and development of the jaws and their relation to the muscles of mastication. He coined the terms cuspids, bicuspids, molars and incisors.

This and Hunter's The natural history of the human teeth (No. 3675) revolutionized the practice of dentistry and provided a basis for later dental research. Hunter devised appliances for the correction of malocclusion. He described the various stages of inflammation of affected teeth, and gave an accurate description of periodontal disease. In the above work he included instructions with regard to the operation of tooth transplantation from one living person directly to the jaw of another. Hunter’s outstanding reputation made this highly dubious procedure more widely accepted than it should have been.

Includes John Hunter’s observations on the secondary sexual characteristics in birds, on the descent of the testis, on the air sac in birds, on the structure of the placenta, etc., together with the original description of the olfactory nerves. Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

In Hunter's day venereal diseases were thought to be due to a single poison. To test this theory Hunter experimented with matter taken from a gonorrhoeal patient who, unknown to Hunter, also had syphilis. Hunter maintained that gonorrhoea and syphilis were caused by a single pathogen. Backed by the weight of his authority, this experiment retarded the development of knowledge regarding the two diseases. Contrary to legend, however, there is no proof that Hunter actually inoculated himself with venereal disease. The hard (“Hunterian”) chancre eponymizes Hunter; his book also contains the first suggestion of lymphogranuloma venereum as a separate disease, and this work also makes a major contribution to urological surgery. Hunter issued this book at his private press at his anatomy school, the address for which he provided on the title page. Digital facsimile from Google Books at this link.

It was while serving with the army at Belle Isle during the Seven Years’ War that Hunter collected the material for his epoch-making book on inflammation and gunshot wounds. His studies on inflammation in particular are fundamental for pathology. Hunter recognized the process of inflammation as one of the most widespread phenomena in pathology, and classified it into three types: adhesive, in which adherence of contiguous parts caused localization of disease; suppurative, in which pus was formed; and ulcerative, in which tissue loss occurred through the action of the lymphatics. This was Hunter's last published work; he was in poor health when the book went to press and died after correcting only one-third of the proofs. The remainder of the work's publication was supervised by Matthew Baillie and Everard Home.

"The following Directions, framed by the late Mr. John Hunter, are intended to facilitate, and render effectual, the Endeavours of such Friends to scientific Inquiries as shall be inclined to futher the designs of the Court [of Assistants], but are not well acquainted with the Arts of preparing, and preserving, animal substances, for anatomical Investigation" (p. 4). Digital facsimile from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Home plagiarized this large work from the manuscripts of John Hunter, his late father-in-law, and, as a result, of immense importance for publication of Hunter’s researches, and for aspects of Hunter's collection on which his "museum" was based. After he corrected the page proofs Home destroyed the original manuscripts by Hunter, on which this work was based. See Qvist, John Hunter (1981). Digital facsimiles from the Hathi Trust at this link.

By numerous authors, many unidentified. All published. From the Preface to part I: "The present Volume... completes the series of Hunterian Catalogues. The specimens included in it consist of Plants and Invertebrate Anaimals, many of which, brought home by Cook, Banks, and White, and other voyagers, were presented to Mr. Hunter. To these is added a large collection of Corallines and Zoophytes, purchased by him at the sale of the effects of Mr. John Ellis. Numerous and valuable specimens have been obtained, both by donation and purchase, since the Collection was entrusted to the care of the Council of the College.

"Many of the lowest forms of Plants, such as the Algae and Nullipores, were the property of Mr. Ellis, and their names are still preserved in the handwriing of that genteman and of Dr. Solander."

Digital facsimile of parts I-II  from the Internet Archive at this link.  

Digital facsimile of part III from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimile of part IV, Fasciculus 1 from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimile of parts V-VI from Google Books at this link.

 I. Organs of motion and digestion. 1833.--II. Absorbent, circulating, respiratory, and urinary systems. 1834.--III. pt. I. Nervous system and organs of sense. pt. II. Connective and tegumentary systems and peculiarities. 1836.--IV. Organs of generation. 1838.--V. Products of generation. 1840. 

When John Hunter died his museum was cared for by his faithful assistant and amanuensis, the artist and anatomist, William Clift, who persuaded the Government to purchase it. Richard Owen later became curator and his monumental catalogue is still of value today. A history of the museum from its foundation to its partial destruction by a high-explosive bomb in May 1941, is given in G. Grey Turner’s Hunterian Museum, 1946.

Digital facsimile from wellcomecollection.org at this link.

Hunter gave a great impetus to the study of morbid anatomy; he was the veritable founder of experimental and surgical pathology. He was responsible for the commencement of some of the greatest medical museums; the Hunterian museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England was based on his own private collection; much of it was destroyed during an air raid in World War II. Vol. I of the above work includes Drewry Ottley’s Life of Hunter. A list of the books written by Hunter, and their location in British libraries, was published by W. R. LeFanu in 1946. The biography by Jessie Dobson, Edinburgh, 1969, includes a chronological list of Hunter’s writings. For a detailed analysis of his scientific works within the context of his life see John Hunter…by George Qvist, London, [1981].

The collection formed by John Hunter, to which was added the collection formed by Hans Sloane acquired from the British Museum in 1809, and material from other donors. Digital facsimile from the Internet Archive at this link.

Digital facsimiles from the Hathi Trust at this link.

Parts 1 and 2 by Flower; part 3 by Sharpe. Digital facsimile of Part 1 from the Biodiversity Heritage Library at this link, of Part 2 at this link, and Part 3 at this link.

Remains one of the best accounts of the development of John Hunter's museum, and its development after Hunter's death, its partial destruction from bombing in World War II, and plans for reconstruction developed in the early aftermath of World War II. The museum was a central project in Hunter's research, organized in a unique way. 

Unlike Lefanu's other bibliographical writings, this is a basic 31 page booklist.

Part 1: Surviving Hunterian specimens demonstrating those organs in plants and animals for the special purposes of the individual. Part 2: Hunterian specimens demonstrating the products of generation together with surviving Hunterian specimens from other collections.

The edition also provides invaluable information regarding Hunter's life and work, and a discussion of the existing Hunterian manuscripts and the record of their survival or loss. As an account of the unique story of the partial survival and partial destruction of John Hunter's manuscripts I quote from the summary provided by the SurgiCat website of the Royal College of Surgeons as accessed in August 2016 at this link:

"The Destruction of the Hunterian Manuscripts:

John Hunter kept many manuscript notes of his dissections, cases, and research. Hunter employed a number of amanuenses so that fair copies of his rough manuscripts could be taken, the rough manuscripts often being destroyed after this had been done. Hunter published two major works on the teeth in 1771 and 1778, as well as many papers on a variety of topics. However there still remained a great deal of unpublished material after Hunter’s death in 1793. These manuscripts were kept at Hunter’s house in Castle Street under the care of William Clift. Over the next six years, William Clift copied many of the manuscripts for his own reference.

John Hunter wished his collection of specimens should be offered to the British Government. In 1799 the collections were offered to The Company of Surgeons, which became The Royal College of Surgeons of England in 1800. A museum was purpose built to incorporate these collections in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. In December 1799, Sir Everard Home ordered that all the Hunterian manuscripts should be transferred to his own house.

Sir Everard Home, a Hunterian Trustee and one of John Hunter’s executors, was entrusted by the Board of Trustees for the Hunterian Collections, to use the manuscripts to compile a catalogue of the specimens. However, this catalogue never appeared. In 1823, Sir Everard Home spoke to William Clift of a fire at his home resulting in the fire brigade being called, which was caused by his burning of John Hunter’s manuscripts in the fireplace.

The Hunterian Trustees began to worry about the catalogue being completed and elected a committee to consider the catalogue at their meeting in February 1824. The Board of Curators of the Museum requested on the 5th March 1824 that the Hunter manuscripts be transferred to the College as soon as possible. Sir Everard Home responded that John Hunter did not consider his manuscripts to be seen by the public due to their imperfect state and that they should instead be destroyed. Home claimed that he had spent the last 30 years using the papers for the benefit of the museum, but due to his own ill health could not continue this, and ended his executorship by destroying them.

The Board of Trustees were astonished and correspondence followed between the Trustees, the Board of Curators, and Sir Everard Home. This resulted in Sir Everard Home presenting the Board of Trustees with a sealed parcel containing some of John Hunter’s descriptions of specimens, on the 27th November 1824. Sir Everard Home claimed these were all the records of Morbid Anatomy of John Hunter. The Board of Curators reported that the records were incomplete and William Clift revealed that the records when he had looked after them between 1793 and 1799 had been much more numerous. Sir Everard Home did not respond to the questions asked of him about these records, but presented the Cases in Surgery manuscripts to the Board of Trustees at the meeting on 19th February 1825.

The reasons behind Sir Everard Home’s destruction of the Hunterian Manuscripts has been discussed on numerous occasions, with several theories being proposed. Sir Arthur Keith suggested for example that Home destroyed the manuscripts out of piety due to the heretical content of some the papers. This explanation has been considered limited due to minority of papers that might be considered of a heretical nature. The theory now more generally accepted to explain the destruction of the majority of the Hunterian manuscripts is that Home was using the contents of the manuscripts in his own publications.

Evidence used to back up this argument includes comparisons between some of John Hunter’s works and those of Sir Everard Home, which contain striking similarities; the extent of publications produced by Home between 1793 and 1823 including an incredible amount of original work for such a short time period; and the fact that Home destroyed the Hunterian manuscripts a few days after receiving the final proofs of his work Lectures on Comparative Anatomy.

Following the presentation by Home of the manuscripts of records in morbid anatomy and cases in surgery, William Clift began to transcribe them. These transcriptions were completed by 1825, and were added to the transcriptions of other Hunterian Manuscripts undertaken by William Clift before the originals were destroyed. Other Hunterian manuscripts have been added to the collections over the years from various sources.

[Source: Elizabeth Allen, JL Turk, Sir Reginald Murley (eds) The Case Books of John Hunter FRS, London: Royal Society of Medicine Services Limited, 1993.]"