ALEXANDER, a celebrated physician and anatomist, and founder of the medical school of Edinburgh, was the son of John Monro, a surgeon in Edinburgh, and 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. On his return to Edinburgh in the autumn of 1719, he was prevailed upon 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 of 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. 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.

On the foundation of the medical faculty of Edinburgh in 1721, Dr Monro was appointed university professor of anatomy, but was not received into the university till the year 1725, when he was inducted along with MacLaurin, the celebrated mathematician. From this time he regularly 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. Dr Monro had a principal share in founding the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh, and was accustomed occasionally to give lectures on the surgical cases which occurred there.

In 1759 he 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 delivered the preceding year. He still endeavoured, however, to render his labours useful, by reading clinical lectures at the hospital for the improvement of the students. Dr Monro died on the 10th of July 1767, in the seventieth year of his age.

Of his works, the first in order is his *Osteology, or Treatise on the Anatomy of the Bones*, which appeared in 1726, and was translated into most of the languages of Europe. In the later edition he added a description of the Lacteal Sae and Thoracic Duct, and gave an admirable description of the Anatomy of the Nerves. The six volumes of *Medical Essays and Observations*, so well known and so much esteemed, were published by a society in Edinburgh, and were mainly owing to his zeal and activity. In the first two volumes of the *Physical and Literary Essays*, published by the Physical Society of Edinburgh, we find several papers written by him, possessing very great merit. His account of the Success of Inoculation in Scotland may be considered as his last publication. A collection of his works, properly arranged, corrected and illustrated with copperplates, with a Life of the author prefixed, was published by his son, Dr Alexander Monro, in one 4to volume, Edinburgh, 1781.