author
Donald Monro
1727–1802
A Scottish physician and medical writer, he is remembered for bringing practical experience from army hospitals into his books on soldiers’ health and medical chemistry.
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About the author
Born in Edinburgh in 1727, he was the second surviving son of the anatomist Alexander Monro primus. He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh, graduated MD in 1753, and went on to build a career in London as a physician.
He is especially associated with military medicine. During the Seven Years’ War he served as a physician to the British army, and his observations on camp disease and hospital conditions later shaped his writing on how soldiers’ health could be protected.
Alongside his medical practice, he wrote on pharmacy, chemistry, and materia medica, helping to spread practical medical knowledge in the late eighteenth century. He died in 1802, and is generally remembered as a thoughtful medical author whose work joined bedside experience with public health concerns.