Alexander Hunter

Dr Alexander Hunter FRSE FRS (1729–1809) was a Scottish physician, known also as a writer and editor.

Born in Edinburgh in 1729 (the Memoir says 1733), he was eldest son of a prosperous druggist.

He was sent to the grammar school at ten, and at fifteen to Edinburgh University, where he remained until he was twenty-one, having devoted the last three years to medicine. He spent the next year or two studying in London, in Rouen (under Le Cat), and in Paris (under Petit), and on his return to Edinburgh received his doctorate (MD) in 1753 (thesis, ‘De Cantharidibus’). After practising for a few months at Gainsborough, and a few years at Beverley, he was invited to York in 1763, on the death of Dr. Perrot, and continued to practise there until his death in 1809.

In 1772 Hunter set to work to establish the York Lunatic Asylum. The building was finished in 1777, and Hunter was physician to it for many years. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (London) in 1777, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1792. His proposers for the latter were Dr Andrew Duncan, Daniel Rutherford, and Sir James Hall. He was also made an honorary member of the Board of Agriculture.

Hunter died in York on 17 May 1809, and was buried in the churchyard of St Michael le Belfrey, York.

His first literary venture was a small tract in 1764, an ‘Essay on the Nature and Virtues of the Buxton Waters,’ which went through six editions. The last appeared in 1797 under the name of ‘The Buxton Manual.’ In 1806 he published a similar work on the ‘Waters of Harrowgate,’ York. He took an active part in founding the Agricultural Society at York in 1770, ‘and to give respectability to the institution, he prevailed on the members to reduce their thoughts and observations into writing.’ These essays, on the food of plants, composts, &c., were edited by him in four volumes (London, 1770–2), under the title of ‘Georgical Essays,’ and were so much valued as to be reprinted three times (once at London and twice at York) before 1803. His ‘New Method of Raising Wheat for a Series of Years on the Same Land’ appeared in 1796, York.

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