Lot 45: Manuscript of William Hunter on the gravid uterus

HUNTER, WILLIAM

Dr. Hunter. On the Gravid Uterus [caption title from f. 2 recto] bound with DENMAN, THOMAS, M.D. Aphorisms on the Application and the Use of the Forceps. On Preternatural Labor and the Labors attended with Hemorhage. London: perhaps 1780s, but undated. Original brown calf, 10 3/4 x 8 1/8 inches (27.25 x 20.75 cm); manuscript on paper, [2], 176 pp. written in brown ink in a neat and legible period hand. The binding is soiled and worn, neatly rebacked retaining the original spine label, and overall sound. Internally, generally a clean, fresh copy, the ink on the first three leaves pale. At the head of the first leaf is a note "Gift of Richard Franklin Esq. to the City Limerick Infirmary Library"; this inscription is dated 1834 and the library from which this work comes has other works of the same provenance, similarly annotated; another small note reads "Doctor Keating," and this (which may be earlier) is undated.

The first work occupies folios 1-132, with a list of contents on the unnumbered leaf preceding. This is likely a fair copy of notes taken by someone in attendance at Hunter's lectures, of which very few sets (perhaps thirteen, according to one authority) are known. It is written in the first person, opening "The Gravid Uterus, in which I had better and more numerous opportunities of making good discoveries than perhaps any man living, and I flatter myself I have not idly wasted my time in my various pursuits on that subject." William Hunter (1718-1783) was the foremost English anatomist of the latter half of the eighteenth century, and his 1774 work, the Anatomia Uteri Humani Gravidi Tabulis Illustrata, was published by Baskerville with thirty-four staggeringly beautiful anatomical plates of the uterus and foetus; the style of depiction was based on the drawings of Leonardo Da Vinci, whose work Hunter was responsible for rediscovering. Of Hunter it was written:

"He never married; he had no country house; he looks, in his portraits, a fastidious, fine gentleman; but he worked till he dropped and he lectured when he was dying."

The second work present here, occupying f. 133-178, treats the use of obstetrical forceps. The taxonomy of labor presented here is largely as presented in the printed editions of Denman, but has some differences of wording, and it may be that this text is drawn from an unpublished source, but said source certainly does not have the immediacy of lecture notes. Thomas Denman (1733–1815) was a pioneer in the area of induced labor in cases where a full-term delivery would risk the life of the mother. He advocated the use of forceps in these cases; Hunter was generally averse to their use.

Richard Franklin who iscribed this book and made a generous gift of medical books to the Limerick Infirmary Library, including the present, is certainly Sir Richard Franklin (d. 1845), who was surgeon to Barrington's Hospital and the City of Limerick Infirmary, and a mayor of the city of Limerick. Franklin would have had a special interest in this book, as he was a certified practitioner in midwifery of the Dublin Lying-in Hospital.

This manuscript is an important resource on obstetrical practice in the late eighteenth century.