MONRO, ALEXANDER, an eminent anatomist, and founder of the medical school of Edinburgh, styled prima to distinguish him from his son and successor, was b. at Lon don, Sept. 8, 1697. His grandfather, sir Alexander Mourn of Bearcrofts, a colonel in the army of Charles II. at the battle of Worcester in 1651, was afterward an advocate at the Scottish bar; and his father, John Monre, for some years a surgeon in the army of king William, in Flanders, on leaving it, entered into practice in Edinburgh. Alex ander studied at London under Cheseldcn, at Paris under Bouquet, and at Leyden under Boerhaave, and in 1719 passed as a surgeon at Edinburgh. In Jan., 1720, he was elected by the town-council first professor of anatomy in the university. Of the establishment and building of the royal infirmary of Edinburgh. 116 was one of the two principal pro moters, mid after it was opened, he delivered clinical lectures them for the benefit of the students. In Jan., 1756, he received the degree of M.D., and in March following was
elected a fellow of the royal college .of physicians of Edinburgh. In 1739 he resigned the anatomical chair to his youngest son, the subject of the following notice, but con tinued his clinical lectures at the Infirmary. His principal works are—Osteology, or Treatise on the Anatomyortke Hn>tens (Edin. 1726; 8vo); Essdy•n Comparative Anatomy (Loud. 1744, 8vo); Observations, Anatomical and Physiological (Edin. 1758, 8vo); and an Account of the Success of Inoculation of Small-pox in Scotland (Edin. 1765, 8vo). He was snretary of a society at Edinburgh, which published six volumes of Medical Essays and Observations, many of them contributed by himself. Two more volumes of _Essays, Physical and Literary, were subsequently issued by the same society, under the name of the philosophical society. Dr. Monro died July 10, 1767. lie was a fellow of the royal society of London, and a member of the royal academy of surgery of Paris.