began a project of exploration, wisely using chickens as his source
material. Stealthily plucking eggs from underneath hens at frequent
intervals, Hunter then cautiously cracked open each egg, using forceps to
peel away the outer membrane and examine the minuscule embryo. While
still fleetingly alive, he placed the little life in a warm bowl of water and
examined it with the naked eye and with his microscope. Eventually
placing all his specimens in spirits, he was able to establish a timeline of
development over its three weeks of development within the egg. Others
would eclipse Hunter in publishing their embryological findings, but his
researches on this topic would exemplify his fastidious scientific
technique.
Within a few years of Hunter caring for his own patients at St. George’s
Hospital, his reputation was sterling enough to attract his own pupils in
anatomy and surgery. An early student who was tutored by Hunter was
William Shippen Jr. (1736–1808). The elder Shippen, who was a self-
educated physician in Philadelphia (and founder of the University of
Pennsylvania and Princeton University), recognized the value of a
European medical education for his son, and sent him on a seven-week
ocean voyage to England in 1758.
Young William Shippen had graduated from the newly founded
Princeton University in 1754,^24 and then spent four years in apprenticeship
with his father. With only a clutch of medical textbooks available to the
Shippens, the decision was made to dispatch the progeny to the “... finest
Anatomist for Dissections, Injections, etc. in England.”^25 “Billie” arrived
in 1758, just ten years after John Hunter had himself appeared in London
as an unsophisticated and ignorant country bumpkin, and now he was in
charge of tutoring one of the Colonies’ most promising offspring.
William Shippen underwent full immersion in anatomical studies,
living at the Covent Garden home of John Hunter and spending the winter
session of 1758–59 under the spell of the Scotsman. A daily journal entry
describes William’s day, “Rose at 6, operated till 8, breakfasted till 9,
dissected till 2, dined till 3, dissected till 5. Lecture till 7, operated till 9,
sup’d till 10 then bed.” Weeks passed as William was fully indoctrinated
in the methodical dissection of the human body, and on many nights,
William and John Hunter chatted away, no doubt enjoying a bit of grog.
“Shippen spent more and more time at Hunter’s shoulder in the dissecting