 Before he had left Australia, Hunter had done "three important researches in utterly different fields of embryology, anthropology, and physiology.Hunter cleared up many of the difficulties in the interpretation of ovarian pregnancy, in the real significance of the occurrence of neanderthaloid characters in aboriginal Australians, and in analysing the complicated factors of spinal shock following transverse section of the spinal cord".While at Cambridge, he did a lot of teaching and lecturing, and made himself familiar with the methods of leading anatomical schools in Great Britain and on the continent.