Regency Personalities Series-Royal Society of Edinburgh

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Royal Society of Edinburgh
1783-

Royal Society of Edinburgh

Royal Society of Edinburgh is Scotland’s national academy of science and letters. It is a registered charity, operating on a wholly independent and non-party-political basis and providing public benefit throughout Scotland. Established in 1783, it has since then drawn upon the strengths and expertise of its Fellows..

The Society covers a broader selection of fields than the Royal Society of London including literature and history. Unlike similar organisations in the rest of the UK, the Fellowship includes people from a wide range of disciplines – science & technology, arts, humanities, medicine, social science, business and public service. This breadth of expertise makes the Society unique in the UK.
At the start of the 18th century, Edinburgh’s intellectual climate fostered many clubs and societies (see Scottish Enlightenment). Though there were several that treated the arts, sciences and medicine, the most prestigious was the Society for the Improvement of Medical Knowledge, commonly referred to as the Medical Society of Edinburgh, co-founded by the mathematician Colin Maclaurin in 1731.
Maclaurin was unhappy with the specialist nature of the Medical Society, and in 1737 a new, broader society, the Edinburgh Society for Improving Arts and Sciences and particularly Natural Knowledge was split from the specialist medical organisation, which then went on to become the Royal Medical Society.
The cumbersome name was changed the following year to the Edinburgh Philosophical Society. Other Founders included William Robertson and the Alexander Monro’s Primus and Secundus. With the help of University of Edinburgh professors like Joseph Black, William Cullen and John Walker, this society transformed itself into the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1783 and in 1788 it issued the first volume of its new journal Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
As the end of the century drew near, the younger members such as Sir James Hall embraced Lavoisier’s new nomenclature and the members split over the practical and theoretical objectives of the society. This resulted in the founding of the Wernerian Society (1808–58), a parallel organisation that focused more upon natural history and scientific research that could be used to improve Scotland’s weak agricultural and industrial base. Under the leadership of Prof. Robert Jameson, the Wernerians first founded Memoirs of the Wernerian Natural History Society (1808–21) and then the Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (1822), thereby diverting the output of the Royal Society’s Transactions. Thus, for the first four decades of the 19th century, the RSE’s members published brilliant articles in two different journals.
The Royal Society has been housed in a succession of locations:

• 1783–1807 – College Library, University of Edinburgh
• 1807–1810 – Physicians’ Hall, George Street; the home of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh
• 1810–1826 – 40–42 George Street; shared with the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland from 1813
• 1826–1908 – the Royal Institution (now called the Royal Scottish Academy Building) on the Mound; shared, at first, with the Board of Manufactures (the owners), the Institution for the Encouragement of the Fine Arts in Scotland and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland

Presidents

• The Duke of Buccleuch (1783–1812)
• Sir James Hall (1812–1820)
• Sir Walter Scott (1820–1832)
• Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane (1832–1860)

The Keith Medal is a prize awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Scotland’s national academy, for a scientific paper published in the society’s scientific journals, preference being given to a paper containing a discovery, either in mathematics or earth sciences.
The Medal was inaugurated in 1827 as a result of a gift from Alexander Keith of Dunottar, the first Treasurer of the Society. It is awarded quadrennially, alternately for a paper published in: Proceedings A (Mathematics) or Transactions (Earth and Environmental Sciences).

• 1827: David Brewster
• 1831: Thomas Graham
• 1833: James David Forbes
• 1835: John Scott Russell
• 1837: John Shaw

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Regency Personalities Series-Alexander Monro (Secundus)

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Alexander Monro of Craiglockhart and Cockburn
22 May 1733 – 2 October 1817

Alexander Monro

Alexander Monro was the third and youngest son of Alexander Monro primus and Isabella Macdonald of Sleat, was born at Edinburgh on 20 May 1733. He was sent with his brothers to Mr Mundell’s school, where he learned the rudiments of Latin and Greek, and showed early evidences of great ability. Among his school-fellows were Ilay Campbell who was afterwards Lord President of the Court of Session and William Ramsay of Barnton, the banker

Alexander’s father decided to make him his successor and sent him to Edinburgh University when he was twelve years old, to attend the ordinary course of philosophy before beginning his professional training. He studied mathematics under the great Colin Maclaurin and ethics under Sir John Pringle. Alexander was also a great favourite of Dr Matthew Stewart, Professor of Experimental Philosophy.

Alexander showed a taste for anatomy and after entering on his medical course in his eighteenth year became a useful assistant to his father in the dissecting room. He attended the lectures of Drs. Rutherford, Andrew Plummer, Alston and Sinclair. He possessed an insatiable thirst for medical knowledge, an uncommon share of perseverance, and a very good memory.

In the session of 1753–54, his father (Alexander Monro primus) found his class too large for the lecture room and had to divide the class, repeating his lecture in the evening. This he found difficult, and he experimented with his son (Alexander Monro secundus taking the evening class. The results were satisfactory and so he presented a petition to the Town Council at the close of the session asking them to appoint his son formally as his successor. This petition was granted on 10 June and Alexander Monro secondus was admitted as conjunct professor on 11 July.

Alexander Monro secundus took his degree as Doctor of Medicine on 20 October 1755. He then proceeded to his studies abroad. He spent a short time in London, where he attended the lectures of Dr William Hunter. He next visited Paris and on 17 September 1757 entered Leyden University where he formed a friendship with two famous anatomists, Bernhard Siegfried Albinus and Petrus Camper. However his foreign studies were prosecuted principally at Berlin, where he worked under the celebrated Professor Meckel, in whose house he lived. Alexander spent some time in Edinburgh during early 1757 in order to fill the place of his father, who was confined to the house by illness. He finally was admitted a licentiate of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh on 2 May 1758 and as a Fellow on 1 May 1759. He was to be elected President of the College in 1779.

His father delivered the opening lectures of the 1758–59 course and then handed the work to Alexander Monro tertius.

In 1771, he wrote a paper on the effect of drugs on the nervous system. He published two controversial ‘observations’ on the lymphatics in 1758, maintaining that he, in a short essay printed at Berlin in 1758, and reprinted in 1761 and 1770, ‘De Venis Lymphaticis Valvulosis,’ and not William Hunter, had first correctly described the general communications of the lymphatic system. Frederick Hoffman had, however, preceded both Monro and Hunter in the description.

In 1783, he published in Edinburgh ‘Observations on the Structure and Functions of the Nervous System,’ dedicated to the Right Hon. Henry Dundas, and it is in consequence of the description in this book of the communication between the lateral ventricles of the brain that his name is known to every student of medicine at the present day. The opening now always spoken of as the ‘foramen of Monro’ is very small in the healthy brain, but when abnormal accumulation of CSF on the brain is present (known as hydrocephalus) may be as large as a sixpence. It was this morbid condition that drew Monro’s attention to the foramen, and he first described it in a paper read before the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh in 1764, but gives a fuller account in this work on the nervous system.

He had always paid much attention to comparative anatomy, and published in 1785 ‘The Structure and Physiology of Fishes explained and compared with those of Man and other Animals.’ In 1788, he published an account of seventy pairs of bursae under the title, ‘Description of all the Bursae Mucosse of the Human Body, their Structure, Accidents, and Diseases, and Operations for their Cure,’ which is stated by several anatomical writers to be the first full description of the bursae.

In 1793, he published ‘Experiments on the Nervous System with Opium and Metalline Substances, to determine the Nature and Effects of Animal Electricity.’ These experiments led him to the conclusion that nerve force was not identical with electricity. His last book, ‘Three Treatises on the Brain, the Eye, and the Ear,’ was published at Edinburgh in 1797.

Manuscript copies of notes of his lectures on anatomy delivered in 1774 and 1775 are preserved in the library of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society of London,’ and some ‘Essays and Heads of Lectures on Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, Surgery,’ very imperfectly arranged, were printed by his son Alexander in 1840. Monro, who in 1777 successfully resisted the appointment of a separate professor of surgery, gave a full course of lectures every year from 1759 to 1800. From 1800 to 1807, he delivered part of the course, his son Alexander completing it, and in 1808 gave the introductory lecture only.

This was his last lecture, and after it his faculties gradually decayed. He became drowsy after dinner, and his nose used to bleed from time to time. In 1813, he had an apoplectic attack.

In later life he was living at 30 St Andrew Square in the New Town.

He died 2 October 1817. He is buried with his parents and wife, Katherine Inglis (d.1803) in Greyfriars Kirkyard in central Edinburgh. The grave lies west of the church and north of the Adam mausoleum.

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