Dr. Monro frequently laboured under a spitting of blood when he caught the least cold, and was subject to inflammatory fevers. After an attack of the influenza in the year 1762, he was severely afflicted with a fun gous ulcer of the bladder and rectum, which he bore with great patience and Christian resignation, and died with uncommon composure on the 10th of July 1767, at the age of seventy.
The works of Dr. Monro were published after his death by his son Alexander, professor of anatomy, in one 4to volume. The luminous order, and accurate phi losophical description which characterize his writings, have secured him the admiration of all succeeding ana tomists. His Osteology, the outlines of which were first read to a medical society, when he was student in London, is yet unrivalled. The methodical and simple arrangement that he has adopted in this work, must con tinue to be a model for every interpreter of nature, who wishes to follow her direction and not his own imagina tion. After showing the situation, general appearances, and divisions of the bones, he points out the connec tion of the one he examines with those around it, and Concludes by enumerating the purposes which the bona serves in the animal economy, and slating its diseases. The Introductory Letter to the first edition of his Com parative Anatomy, is an able defence of this important branch of science. His Comparative Anatomy is ex
cellent ; and nothing affords so striking a proof of the range of Monro's mind, and the correctness of his rea soning, as the intimate union he assisted in establishing between comparative and human anatomy, from which he endeavoured to deduce his physiological observations. It clearly appears from his papers on medicine and sur gery, that he was amongst the first, who, by conducting manual operations according to the light of science, as sisted to rescue surgery from barbarism and ignorance, and to restore it to that rank and estimation which so use ful a part of the medical profession is fully entitled to claim. His last work on inoculation in Scotland, written at the age of sixty-eight, evinces with what eagerness he continued to promote improvements in medicine, and to check the progress of prejudices injurious to the health, the comfort, and the lives of his fellow-men.
See Life of Dr. Monro, Primus, prefixed to his Works ; Dr. Duncan's ?lccount of his Life ; Bowers' History of the University of Edinburgh, ii. p. 166 —188 ; Dr. Barclay's Preface to a Series of Engravings, representing the Bones. by Edward Mitchel, Engraver, Edinburgh ; and The Medical School of Edinburgh.