Born on 16 July 1890, the third child and only son of James Hunter, a shipbroker, and Mary Hood, his wife; his parents both died while he was a child. He was brought up by his aunts at Ayr, and sent to Bedford School, where he proved a good Rugby player, and to St John's College, Cambridge, where he

Born at Middlesbrough, he won a scholarship at Pembroke College, Cambridge, took first-class honours in the Natural Sciences Tripos, part I, 1911, and won the Shuter scholarship at St Bartholomew's Hospital. He qualified just after war broke out in 1914, and served for four years as a surgeon in the