Edward Jenner

Many of Hunter's letters to Jenner have been preserved, but Jenner's letters to Hunter have unfortunately been lost. This letter from Hunter to Jenner, dated September 25, 1778, reveals the closeness of their friendship:Dear Jenner,

I know I was at a loss to account for your silence and I was sorry for the cause. I can easily conceive how you must feel for you have two passions to cope with, viz. that of being disappointed in love, and that of being defeated; but both will wear out, perhaps the first the soonest. I know I was glad when I heard you was married to a woman of fortune; but "let her go, never mind her". I shall employ you with hedgehogs, for I do know how far I might trust mine. I want you to get a hedgehog in the beginning og winter and weigh him; put him in your garden and let him have some leaves, hay or straw to cover himself with, which he will do; then weigh him in the Spring and see what he has lost. Secondly I want you to kill one at the beginning of Winter to see how fat he is, and another in Spring to see what he has lost of his fat. Thirdly, when the weather is very cold, and abouth the month of January, I could wish you would observe their beat . . . . so much at present for hedgehogs. I beg pardon - examine the stomach and intestines.

Ever yours, J. Hunter.One flew over the cuckoo's nest

In 1786 Jenner wrote a paper on the breeding habits of the cuckoo and Hunter submitted it to the Royal Society. Jenner had shown that when a cuckoo's egg, laid in the nest of another bird such as the hedge sparrow, was hatched, the eggs or nestlings of the foster parent were thrown out of the nest, apparently by their own parents. Jenner had no explanation for this seemingly unnatural bahaviour. The paper was read before the society on March 29, 1787 and was accepted for publication in the Philosophical Transactions. Then, on June 18, 1787, Jenner discovered that it was the newly hatched cuckoo which ejected from the nest of its own "foster parent" the hedge sparrow's own unhatched eggs and nestling. Accordingly, Jenner withdrew his original paper before publication and revised it. On December 27, 1787 he sent the revised report to Hunter, and it was read before the Royal Society on March 13, 1788.