Dear Matthew,
The collections of minerals, fossils and calculi amassed by William Hunter (1718-1783) are in the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow (http://www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk/). As far as the calculi are concerned, there is evidence that William Hunter had prepared a descriptive work for publication, of which only the drawings for the plates now survive. The calculi collection was listed by Teacher in his catalogue of the anatomical and pathological preparations in the Hunterian Museum (Teacher, 1900). Teacher classified the collection according to the system used at the Royal College of Surgeons in London, which held the collection of William's brother John (1728-1793). John's collection of minerals was sold after his death, but his collections of fossils and calculi were among the material transferred to the College in 1800. In 1809 the collection of calculi was added to when the British Museum sold their collection of anatomical preparations to the College: the sale included Hans Sloane's collection of calculi. The combined collection was described in a catalogue published in two volumes between 1842-1845 (Taylor 1842-45), by which time any sense of John Hunter's original classification had been largely erased. None of the Hunterian or Sloanian calculi survived the bombing of the College in 1941.
The relationship between the Hunters' collections of various kinds of concretions is discussed in Ian Rolfe's paper in the collection edited by Bynum and Porter (Rolfe, 1985).
It is probably also worth checking the collections at the Royal College of Surgeons in Edinburgh, and/or the Anatomy Department at the University of Edinburgh.
With best wishes
Simon Chaplin
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Simon Chaplin
Senior Curator, Museums of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, London WC2A 3PE
t. +44 (0)20 7869 6570/f. 6564
Teacher, John. 1900. Catalogue of the anatomical and pathological preparations of Dr. William Hunter in the Hunterian Museum, University of Glasgow. 2 vols. Glasgow: James MacLehose and Sons.
Taylor, Thomas. 1842-1845. A descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the calculi and other animal concretions contained in the Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London. 2 Vols. London: Richard and John E. Taylor for the College.
Rolfe, W D Ian. 1985. William and John Hunter: breaking the Great Chain of Being. In William Hunter and the Eighteenth-Century Medical World, edited by W. F. a. P. Bynum, Roy: Cambridge University Press.
-----Original Message-----
From: History of Natural History [mailto:[log in to unmask]]On
Behalf Of M. D. Eddy
Sent: 19 March 2004 21:57
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [HIST-NAT-HIST] Scottish Mineralogical Collections (c.
1750-1790)
Dear List,
Are there any extant eighteenth-century (c. 1750-1790) Scottish
mineral and/or bodily concretion (calculi, ossifications, tumours,
etc.) collections? I know that Prof John Walker's collections are
partially preserved, but I would like to find others so that I can
compare and contrast different conceptions of classification and
chemical composition.
Yours,
Matthew.
*******************
Dr. Matthew D. Eddy
Dibner Institute, MIT E56-100, 38 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139
USA
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