Alexander Monro

author

Alexander Monro

1733–1817

Remembered as one of the great medical teachers of Enlightenment Edinburgh, he helped turn anatomy into a subject students came from across Europe to study. His name still lives on in the foramen of Monro and in the Monro–Kellie doctrine.

1 Audiobook

Experiments on the Nervous System with Opium and Metalline Substances Made Chiefly with the View of Determining the Nature and Effects of Animal Electricity

Experiments on the Nervous System with Opium and Metalline Substances Made Chiefly with the View of Determining the Nature and Effects of Animal Electricity

by Alexander Monro

About the author

Born in Edinburgh in 1733, Alexander Monro secundus was a Scottish anatomist, physician, and medical educator. He belonged to the famous Monro family of doctors and succeeded his father in the anatomy chair at the University of Edinburgh, later sharing that legacy with his own son.

He studied medicine in Edinburgh and on the Continent, then became one of the best-known anatomy lecturers of his day. Contemporary and later reference sources credit him with helping make Edinburgh an international center for medical teaching, and with important work on the lymphatic system, the brain, and the ventricular opening now called the foramen of Monro.

He died in 1817 after a long academic career. Today he is usually distinguished from the other two family members of the same name by the label "secundus," meaning the second.