Everard Home

Sir Everard Home (b. Hull, May 6 1756; d. August 31 1832 in London) was a British physician. Sir Everard Home FRS was educated at Westminster School; Trinity College, Cambridge; St. George's Hospital; and Surgeons' Hall. At St George's Hospital, he was a pupil of his brother-in-law, John Hunter. He assisted Hunter in many of his anatomical investigations, and in the autumn of 1776 he partly described Hunter's collection. There is also considerable evidence that Home plagiarized the work of John Hunter sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, he also systematically destroyed his brother in-law's papers in order to hide the evidence. Having qualified at Surgeons' Hall in 1778, he was appointed assistant surgeon at the naval hospital, Plymouth. Home was the first to describe the fossil creature (later 'Ichthyosaur') discovered by Joseph Anning and Mary Anning in 1812. Following John Hunter he initially suggested it had affinities with fish. He published prolifically on human and animal anatomy, and gave the Croonian Lecture to the Royal Society many times between 1793 and 1829.