John Hunter Gave Himself Gonorrhea and Syphilis

John Hunter was a renowned 18th-century surgeon in London and eventually become the most famous physician in all of England. Hunter made enormous contributions to anatomy and embryology through the dissection of cadavers pilfered by the professional grave robbers known as resurrection men.  This knowledge of anatomy allowed him to develop limb-saving treatment for popliteal aneurysms, an occupational illness of coachmen caused by repetitive trauma from their high-top leather boots as their carriages bounced over the cobblestones. Hunter also experimented with artificial insemination, tooth transplantation, collateral circulation, and bone growth and remodeling.

Despite his achievements, Hunter disdained scholarly study, preferring to focus on personal observation and investigation. As Hunter once wrote to his favorite student, Edward Jenner, “I think your solution is just, but why think? Why not try the experiment?” Hunter concluded from clinical experience, including his early placebo studies, that the contemporary cure-alls of bleeding, purging, and mercury were useless. These views were radical at the time.  Hunter was also keenly aware of the current limitations of surgery — he likened a surgeon to “an armed savage who attempts to get that by force which a civilized man would get by stratagem.”

Hunter’s zeal for experimentation, however, resulted in disaster when he attempted to determine whether syphilis and gonorrhea were distinct conditions.  Following Jenner’s approach with smallpox, he inoculated gonorrheal pus from a patient into the genitals of an uninfected subject — himself. Unfortunately, Hunter’s source patient was infected with both gonorrhea and syphilis. When the subject developed symptoms of both, Hunter wrongly concluded that the two diseases were different aspects of the same illness.

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