Dr Alexander, senior, a celebrated physician and anatomist, was the son of Mr John Monro, who was for some years a surgeon in the army under King William in Flanders, and who afterwards settled in that capacity in Edinburgh. The subject of this biographical sketch was born in London in 1697. He showed an early inclination to the study of physic; and his father, after giving him the best education which Edinburgh then afforded, sent him successively to London, Paris, and Leyden, to improve himself further in his profession. At London he attended the lectures of Hawksbee and Whiston on experimental philosophy, and the anatomical demonstrations of Mr Cheselden. At Paris he frequented the hospitals, and the lectures on the different branches of physic and surgery; and, towards the end of autumn 1718, he went to Leyden, and studied under the celebrated Boerhaave. On his return to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1719, Drummond and Macgill, who were then conjunct nominal professors and demonstrators of anatomy to the Company of Surgeons, having resigned in his favour, his father prevailed on him to read some public lectures on anatomy, and to illustrate them by showing the curious anatomical preparations which he had made and sent home when abroad. He at the same time persuaded Dr Alston, then a young man, to give some public lectures on botany. Accordingly, in the beginning of the winter 1720, these two young professors began to give regular courses of lectures, the one on the materia medica and botany, the other on anatomy and surgery; and these were the first regular courses of lectures on any of the branches of medicine which had ever been read at Edinburgh, and may be looked upon as the opening of that medical school which has since acquired so great reputation all over Europe.

In the summers of 1721 and 1722, Dr Monro, by the persuasion of his father, read some lectures on chirurgical subjects, particularly on wounds and tumours, which he never would publish, having written them in a hurry, and before he had much experience; but he inserted from time to time the improvements which he thought might be made in surgery, in the volumes of Medical Essays and Observations, to be hereafter mentioned.

About the year 1720, his father communicated to the physicians and surgeons at Edinburgh a plan which he had long formed in his own mind, of having the different branches of physic and surgery regularly taught at Edinburgh. This was highly approved of by them; and through their interest regular professorships of anatomy and medicine were instituted in the university. Such was the foundation of the Medical Faculty of Edinburgh. His son, Dr Monro, was first made university professor of anatomy; and, two or three years afterwards, Drs Sinclair, Rutherford, Innes, and Plummer, were made professors of medicine; the professorship of materia medica and botany, which Dr Alston then held, having been added to the university many years before. Immediately after these gentlemen were elected professors, they began to deliver regular courses of lectures on the different branches of medicine; and they and their successors have uniformly continued to do so every winter since that time.

But the plan for a medical education at Edinburgh was still incomplete without an hospital, where students could see the practice of physic and surgery, as well as hear the lectures of the professors. A scheme was therefore proposed by Dr Monro's father, and others, particularly the members of the Royal College of Physicians and Board of Surgeons, for raising by subscription a fund for building and supporting an hospital for the reception of diseased poor; and Dr Monro published a pamphlet setting forth the advantages which would attend such an institution. In a short time a very considerable sum of money was raised; a small house was fitted up; and patients were admitted into it, and regularly attended by many of the physicians and surgeons in town. As the fund for this charity had considerably increased, owing in a great measure to the activity and influence of Mr George Drummond, the foundation was laid of the present large, commodious, and useful hospital, the Royal Infirmary, in the planning of which Dr Monro suggested many useful hints; and, in particular, the elegant room for chirurgical operations was designed and executed under his direction. Provost Drummond and he were nominated the building committee, and the fabric was completed in a short space of time. It has since been so largely endowed, as to be capable of receiving a great number of diseased poor, whose various cases the students of physic and surgery have an opportunity of seeing daily treated with the greatest attention and care by physicians and surgeons eminent in their profession; and a register of the particulars of all the cases which have been received into the house since it was first opened has been kept, in books appropriated to that purpose, for the use of the students.

In order to render the hospital of still further use to the students, Dr Monro frequently, whilst he continued professor of anatomy, gave lectures on the chirurgical cases; and Dr Rutherford, then professor of the practice of physic, began, in the year 1748, to deliver clinical lectures, to be continued every winter, on the most remarkable cases which occurred in the hospital.

Dr Monro, though he was elected professor of anatomy in the year 1721, was not received into the university till the year 1725, when he was inducted along with Mr Colin MacLaurin, the celebrated mathematician, with whom he ever lived in the strictest friendship. From this time he regularly every winter gave a course of lectures on anatomy and surgery, from October to May, upon a most judicious and comprehensive plan; a task in which he persevered with the greatest assiduity, and without the least interruption, for nearly forty years; and so great was the reputation he had acquired, that students flocked to him from the most distant corners of his majesty's dominions.

In 1759 the professor entirely relinquished the business of the anatomical theatre to his son Dr Alexander Monro, who had returned from abroad, and had assisted him in the course of lectures the preceding year. But after this resignation, he still endeavoured to render his labours useful to mankind, by reading clinical lectures at the hospital for the improvement of the students. Of these, Dr Duncan, who was one of his pupils, has given an interesting account.

"There I had myself the happiness of being a pupil, who profited by the judicious conduct of his practice, and was improved by the wisdom and acuteness of his remarks. I have indeed to regret that I attended only the last course of lectures in which he had ever a share, and at a time when he was subjected to a disease which proved at length fatal. Still, however, from what I saw and from what I heard, I can venture to assert, that it is hardly possible to conceive a physician more attentive to practice, or a preceptor more anxious to communicate instructions. His humanity in the former of these characters led him to bestow the most anxious care on his patients while they were alive; and his zeal in the latter induced him to make them the subject of useful lessons when they happened to die. In the different stations of physician, of lecturer, and of manager in the hospital, he took every measure for inquiring into the causes of diseases, by dissection. He personally attended the opening of every body; and he not only dictated to the students an accurate report of the dissection, but with nice discrimination contrasted the diseased and sound state of every organ. Thus, in his own person he afforded to the students a conspicuous example of the advantages of early anatomical pursuits, as the happiest foundation for a medical superstructure. His being at once engaged in two departments, the anatomical theatre and clinical chair, furnished him with opportunities both on the dead and living body, and placed him in the most favourable situation for the improvement of medicine; and from these opportunities he derived every possible advantage which they could afford."

His father, Mr Monro, lived to an advanced age, and enjoyed the unspeakable pleasure of beholding a son, esteemed and regarded by mankind, the principal actor in the execution of his favourite plan, which formed the great object of his life, that of founding a seminary of medical education in his native country. The son, who survived him nearly thirty years, had the satisfaction to behold this seminary of medical education frequented yearly by three or four hundred students, many of whom came from the most distant corners of his majesty's dominions, and to see it arrive at a degree of reputation far beyond his most sanguine hopes. Dr Monro died on the 10th of July 1767, in the 70th year of his age.

Of his works, the first in order is his Osteology, which was written for the use of students, but is capable also of affording instruction to the oldest and most experienced practitioner; as, besides a minute description of the parts copied from nature, it everywhere abounds with new and important observations immediately applicable to practice. It has been translated into many different languages; has passed through numerous editions; and has been reprinted in foreign countries in the most superb manner, accompanied with elegant and masterly engravings. His description of the Lacteal Sac and Thoracic Duct contains the most accurate account of that important part of the body which has yet been published; and his Anatomy of the Nerves will transmit to posterity an excellent example of accurate dissection, faithful description, and ingenious reasoning. The six volumes of Medical Essays and Observations, published by a society in Edinburgh, are universally known and esteemed. To that society he was appointed secretary; but, after the publication of the first volume, to which he had largely contributed, the members growing remiss in their attendance, he became the sole collector and publisher of the work. To him we are therefore in a great measure indebted for those numerous and important discoveries with which this publication has enriched every department of medical knowledge. In the two first volumes of the Physical and Literary Essays, published by the Physical Society of Edinburgh, in which he had the rank of one of the presidents, we find several papers written by him, which are not the least ornaments of that collection. His account of the Success of Inoculation in Scotland may be considered as his last publication. It demonstrates his extensive correspondence and indefatigable industry, and has had great influence in promoting that salutary practice. Besides these, he was also the author of several other elegant and masterly productions, which were either never published, or were published without his knowledge and from incorrect copies. A collection of his works, properly arranged, corrected, and illustrated with copperplates, was published by Dr Alexander Monro, his son and successor in the anatomical chair, in a splendid quarto volume, printed at Edinburgh in 1781; and to this was prefixed a life of the author, by another of his sons, Dr Donald, physician in London.