Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 6.djvu/247

Rh from these sources his natural and acquired abilities were much improved may readily be supposed ; and he himself was so fully sensible of what he owed to so eminent a preceptor as Meckell, that, (luring the long period for which he taught anatomy at Edinburgh, he allowed not a single year to pass without repeatedly expressing his gratitude for the instruction he had received under the roof of this justly celebrated professor.

From Berlin, Dr Monro returned to Edinburgh in summer 1758. Immediately upon his return he was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians, and entered upon actual practice. As soon as the regulations of the college would permit, he was raised to the rank of Fellowship, and took his seat as a member of that respectable body on the 1st of May, 1759. After that date, for more than half a century, he continued to exert himself with unwearied activity, not only as a professor and practitioner, but as an improver of the healing art, and of our knowledge of the philosophy and structure of the animal frame. This will abundantly appear from a short review of the different publications with which he has enriched the treasury of medical philosophy, conveying important instruction both to his contemporaries, and to the latest posterity.

Very soon after he settled in Edinburgh, he not only became a colleague of his father in the college, but succeeded him also as secretary to the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh. In the volumes published by the society, Dr Monro first appeared as an author. His first publication was printed in the first volume of a well known and justly celebrated work, entitled, Essays and Observations, Physical and Literary, read before a Society in Edinburgh, and published by them. This volume of their memoirs appeared in 1754, and contains two anatomical essays by Alexander Monro, student of medicine in the university of Edinburgh ; from both of which he obtained very great credit as an intelligent and industrious young anatomist In their second volume, published in 1756, are contained also two articles from his pen ; the dissection of a monster, and the history of a genuine volvulus of the intestines ; both of which served materially to improve the philosophy of medicine, and to do credit to the author. His next three publications were more of a controversial nature than calculated to extend our knowledge of the structure or philosophy of the human body. From a very early period, as appears from his inaugural dissertation, he had adopted the idea that the valvular lymphatics over the whole of the animal body, were one general system of absorbents : and, with the view of promulgating this doctrine, he published at Berlin, in 1758, a short treatise, De Venis Lymphatic-is Valvulosis. The grand idea, however, which this short treatise contained, was afterwards claimed by Dr William Hunter of London; and this claim drew from the pen of Dr Monro two other publications, Observations, Anatomical and Physiological, wherein Dr Hunter's claim to some Discoveries, is examined, and, Answer to the Notes on the Postscript to Observations Anatomical and Physiological. Here, the only difference between these two eminent men was, not with regard to the extent or use of the valvular lymphatics, but with regard to the merit of being the discoverer of their use. A judgment on that controversy is now of very little importance ; and perhaps neither of them is justly entitled to the merit of the discovery. For, prior to either, that the lymphatics were a general system, had been explicitly stated by the illustrious Hoffman. But that the anatomical labours, both of Monro and Hunter, independently of any information which the one derived from the other, tended very much to extend our knowledge of the lymphatic system, will not be denied by any intelligent reader.

In the year 1771, the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, which Dr Monro tended not a little to support, by fulfilling all the duties of an intelligent and