room, in awe of this charismatic teacher, who seemingly had a knack of
inspiring young pupils with a fascination for anatomy.”^26
The first medical school in the Western Hemisphere was in
Philadelphia, at what was initially called the College of Philadelphia (later
“University of Pennsylvania”), and was cofounded by William Shippen
and another John Hunter disciple, John Morgan. Philadelphia boasts the
oldest hospital in America, the first medical school, and the first “genius
society,” the American Philosophical Society. While it is the cradle of
modern American surgery, it is John Hunter who may claim paternity over
the teaching of anatomy and surgery in the new world.
The remarkable transformation from hinterland simpleton to anatomy
sage was largely based upon Hunter’s obsessive and energetic dedication
to body snatching, dissection, and inculcation. Generations of medical
students trod their way to London to be swept up in the vortex of Hunter’s
“companionable” nature in which he “drank his bottle, told his story, and
laughed with others.”^27 But more than an amiable nature explains his
success. His compulsive search for the truth about the structure and
function of the body led him to systematically “... question every
established practice, develop hypotheses to advance better methods, and
test by means of rigorous observation, investigation, and experiment
whether these methods worked.”^28 To truly achieve advancements in a
procedure-based science like surgery, John Hunter needed a volume of
cases, and while metropolitan living had provided a concentration of
diseases among the growing populace, his future prospects as a reputable
surgeon were limited without some other distinguishing experience.
In what historians consider the first world war, Great Britain and France
engaged in battles on land and sea in the Seven Years’ War, resulting in
Britain’s supremacy and France’s decline after 1763. Five years into the
conflict, in 1761, Britain’s war secretary William Pitt decided to focus his
attention on the west coast of France and the small French island of Belle
Île. Months before, in the fall of 1760, John Hunter was commissioned as
an army surgeon, following Hippocrates’s ancient wisdom, that “He who
wishes to be a surgeon should go to war.” Boarding the hospital ship Betty,
John Hunter surely knew that tragedy awaited, and after the weeklong
voyage to the Atlantic coast of France, the first assault commenced
disastrously. The flotilla of 130 British ships faced a nearly impregnable
island, with almost insurmountable cliffs set along a jagged coastline.