Hunter, William, 1718–83, Scottish physician. He was famous as a lecturer, as London's leading obstetrician, as professor of anatomy and later president of the Royal Academy of Arts, and as head of a school and museum of anatomy where many noted men were trained. He bequeathed his valuable anatomical collection to the Univ. of Glasgow. His works include the important Anatomy of the Human Gravid Uterus (1774).

Bibliography

See biography by C. Illingworth (1967); study by R. H. Fox (1901); memoir by G. C. Peachey (1924).

Hunter, William

(born May 23, 1718, Long Calderwood, Lanarkshire, Scot.—died March 30, 1783, London, Eng.) British obstetrician, educator, and medical writer. The brother of John Hunter, he studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and became a licensed physician in London in 1756. He introduced the French practice of providing individual medical students with cadavers for dissection to Britain. After 1756 his medical practice was devoted principally to obstetrics; he became the most successful specialist of his day and was made physician extraordinary to Queen Charlotte in 1762. His work did much to remove obstetrics from the purview of midwives and establish it as an accepted branch of medicine.