Searchable abstracts of presentations at key conferences in endocrinology
Endocrine Abstracts (2014) 34 SE1.6 | DOI: 10.1530/endoabs.34.SE1.6

SFEBES2014 Senior Endocrinologists Session (1) (6 abstracts)

Reproductive biology in the enlightenment: some contributions of the hunter brothers

Brian Cook


Royal Infirmary, Glasgow, UK.


In 1807, the Hunterian museum, the first public museum in Scotland, opened at the University of Glasgow. Its contents were bequeathed by William Hunter, a graduate of the university, and included, as well as anatomy specimens, books, coins, paintings, natural history specimens, ‘curiosities from the South Seas’, minerals, fossils and so forth. A letter of 1809 stated ‘Hunter’s museum has been here for some time and drawn a considerable number of students to this place. Some years ago there were not a hundred medical students in Glasgow now there is more than double that number’. The specimens were used by William Hunter in his anatomy school in London. He was the greatest anatomy teacher of his day and his reputation as a lecturer was so substantial that men such as Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon and Edmund Burke went to hear him. John, William’s brother, initially worked as his assistant but later also developed a museum of specimens of natural history and human anatomy which has passed into the care of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. Both men were gifted scientific investigators, each maintained a successful medical practice and each developed remarkable collections. Their contributions to reproductive biology include William’s great treatise, ‘The Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus’, the discovery of the decidual reaction, the elucidation of the relationship between follicles, ova and corpora lutea, the descent of the testes, the nature of the free-martin and other ‘hermaphrodites’, and the use of artificial insemination. The scope of their work was tremendous and reflects the ferment of the times when Scotland was the intellectual centre of Europe, a time which we now know as the enlightenment.

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