Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica

London: G. Nicol, 1788. First edition, 8vo, half-title, contemporary tree calf, gilt tooled spine with red morocco gilt label, bookplates, blindstamps of [Shirburn Castle] South Library to a few leaves, a very attractive copy.

Hunter was born in Perthshire, and studied medicine at Edinburgh University, where he graduated M.D. in 1775.

From 1781 to 1783 Hunter was superintendent of the military hospitals in Jamaica. On returning to England he settled in practice as a physician in London. Elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1787, he was admitted a fellow of the College of Physicians speciali gratia in 1793 and was made censor the same year.

As Gulstonian Lecturer in 1796, Hunter lectured on the softening of the brain, which he is said to have been the first to treat as a distinct pathological condition; the lecture was not published. He was later physician extraordinary to the Prince of Wales.

In 1788 appeared Hunter’s major work, Observations on the Diseases of the Army in Jamaica (2nd ed. 1796; 3rd ed. 1808, with “observations on the hepatitis of the East Indies”). It gives an amplified account of the “dry belly-ache”, and deals with yellow fever and other diseases of the troops, as well as more briefly with some other Caribbean maladies. It was translated into German, Leipzig, 1792.