While his students were waiting for him to lecture, they found his corpse in front of them: Who is John Hunter?

Hunter was born in Long Calderwood, the last child of a relatively well-to-do family. He grew up with a deep interest in nature since his childhood. The person from his family who had the most influence on his life was his older brother, William Hunter, who was also an obstetrician, anatomist, and the founder of his own anatomy school. He accumulated savings here for his future career, and the most crucial periods of his student life were spent with his older brother.

At the age of 20, he came to London to join his brother and had the opportunity to meet the best surgeons of the period. The anatomy education he received under William deeply affected him - and after a while, he started giving anatomy lessons. When his brother thought he was advanced enough, he became a student of Dr William Cheselden, the best surgeon of the time, at Chelsea Hospital.

While he was working alongside his brother, as the death rate for pregnant women increased in London, eyes turned to his brother, his teacher at the time, William Smelli, and naturally to himself. However, due to the living conditions in Georgian England and its impact on pregnant women, we know today that the main reason for the increase in death rates was preeclampsia, an obstetric disease. This disease is diagnosed with hypertension and excess protein in the urine and occurs in the second trimester. It is a progressive disease and can have bad consequences for both mother and baby.

John Hunter (13 February 1728 – 16 October 1793) was a British surgeon, one of the most distinguished scientists and surgeons of his day. He was an early advocate of careful observation and scientific method in medicine. He was a teacher of, and collaborator with, Edward Jenner, pioneer of the smallpox vaccine. He paid for the stolen body of Charles Byrne, and proceeded to study and exhibit it against the deceased's explicit wishes. His wife, Anne Hunter (née Home), was a poet, some of whose poems were set to music by Joseph Haydn.

In addition to Dr William Cheselden, Hunter worked under Dr Pervical Pott at St Bartholomew's Hospital. The most interesting thing is; He studied under Marie Marguerite Bihéron, an anatomist, medical illustrator, and wax model artist. One of the research he did before joining the army, other than anatomy, was to measure the effects of taking blood from the patient on healing. His conclusion is that inflammation, an important part of the immune system, is a reaction of the body, not a pathology.

In the period until the development of modern surgical training, joining the army was an experience that surgeons who wanted to be successful had to go through. Most surgical advances took place on the battlefield. John Hunter also served as a surgeon in many wars, and during this time he had the opportunity to develop new techniques and conduct research. During the 7 Years' War, he was in Portugal and France with the army and studied gun wounds and exhaustion. Contrary to popular belief, he suggested that widening the wound in gunshot wounds, although it facilitates the removal of foreign matter, is a method that should be avoided because it increases the risk of infection. Thus, he went against the established view and made a major breakthrough in modern medicine.

After leaving the army in 1763, he spent the next 5 years with his collaborator James Spence. Here he carried out studies on tooth transplantation. After his dental research, he bought a house in London where he could exhibit the living species he collected during his travels to Portugal and France and conduct anatomical research. He was subsequently elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1767. That same year, he suggested that gonorrhea and syphilis were caused by the same pathogen. It is even said that he used his own body to prove this; However, this claim is most likely not true and he actually used a test subject.

The year 1768 was a critical year for Hunter. This year marked the beginning of the years when he approached the last years of his career and reached the best points in his career: He was appointed as chief surgeon at St George Hospital and later became a member of the Association of Surgeons. He then became surgeon to King George III in 1776, the same year the United States declared its independence from the Kingdom of England. In the same year, he successfully performed the first artificial insemination in world history.

In 1783, he moved to a larger house in Leicester Square, where he collected his entire living collection. He added the body of Charles Byrne, 2.31 meters tall, to this collection, which he bought with a bribe. So he was now ready to open his own anatomy school. Subsequently, many of the collections here were taken to the Hunter Museum, which was later affiliated with the Royal Academy of Surgeons by the British Government.

He raised many students at his school in Leicester. These include Edward Jenner, who would change medical history by discovering the smallpox vaccine. During this period, Hunter also conducted research on evolution thanks to the collections in his museum. Three years after the work he carried out in his home and museum, in 1786, he returned to the army with the prestigious title of "chief surgeon". During his time in the army, he made contributions to the training of army surgeons.

Thanks to his deep knowledge of anatomy, he contributes to many fields, from gunshot wounds to venereal diseases, fetal development, dentistry, and the theory of evolution. His contribution to the theory of evolution comes from his studies of comparative anatomy. It can be said that he carried out studies on evolution with these studies and especially with the living anatomy collections in the Hunter Museum. There are also cancerous findings in the samples he collected for his collection. Examples include breast cancer, rectal cancer, and carcinoma. Therefore, we can easily say that it also contributes to oncology. The most important of these is that he discussed surgery from a scientific perspective.

Hunter, who claimed that experimentation was the most important thing in surgery, said goodbye to the world in 1793 as a result of chest pain and a subsequent heart attack as a result of an argument he had in the hospital. On the morning of the next day, his students gathered for a lesson in the anatomy theater, but this time their teacher was there not to lecture, but as a cadaver.