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.