Alexander Monro (tertius)
| Alexander Monro III | |
|---|---|
Alexander Monro in the 1840s
|
|
| Born |
5 November 1773 Edinburgh, Scotland |
| Died | 10 March 1859 (aged 85) Craiglockhart, Scotland |
| Nationality | Scottish |
| Fields | medicine, surgery, anatomy |
| Alma mater | University of Edinburgh |
Alexander Monro III of Craiglockhart, FRSE FRCPE FSA(Scot) MWS (5 November 1773 – 10 March 1859), was a Scottish anatomist and medical educator at the University of Edinburgh Medical School. According to his detractors, Monro was an uninspired anatomist who did not compare with his brilliant father or grandfather as a teacher or scientist. His students included Charles Darwin who asserted that Monro "made his lectures on human anatomy as dull as he was himself."
Born on Nicolson Street in Edinburgh on 5 November 1773, Monro received his M.D. from Edinburgh in 1797, then studied in London under Wilson and in Paris, returning to Edinburgh in 1800.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1798, his proposers being Andrew Duncan, John Hill and Thomas Charles Hope.
In the early 19th century Edinburgh University was regarded as the best medical school in the United Kingdom but had declined significantly from its heyday in the Enlightenment of the 18th century. Two thirds of the professors were appointed by the Tory-controlled Edinburgh Corporation on the basis of their party list subject to approval by the Kirk, with little regard for ability. In some cases families treated the university chairs as hereditary, and critics alleged that Alexander Monro III exemplified the "mediocrity" this could produce. His manner was described as "unimpassioned indifference" and lectures were known to degenerate into riots.
Monro took little pride in his personal appearance and was described by contemporaries as dishevelled, scruffy and even dirty. This was an era when many in medicine considered cleanliness to be finicking and affected. "An executioner might as well manicure his nails before chopping off a head." For this reason, Charles Darwin, a student at Edinburgh University in 1825, was disgusted by Monro arriving at lectures still bloody from the dissecting room. Darwin wrote his family that "I dislike [Monro] and his lectures so much that I cannot speak with decency about them. He is so dirty in person and actions." Many students turned to competing private schools in Surgeon's Square instead, with Charles' brother Erasmus going to John Lizars, but Charles found the sight of surgery so upsetting that he stopped trying and turned his attention to natural history.
...
Wikipedia