Alexander Monro III, Scottish Anatomist

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Alexander Monro, Tertius (1773-1859), was a Scottish surgeon, anatomist and medical educator at Edinburgh Medical College. 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. In 1828, during Monro's tenure as Professor of Anatomy, Edinburgh was rocked by scandal of the "Burke and Hare murders" in which healthy people were killed in order to supply cadavers for dissection by anatomy lecturers and their students. Burke was dissected at the Edinburgh Medical College by Monro himself. In a letter, Monro dipped his quill pen into Burke's blood and wrote, "This is written with the blood of Wm Burke, who was hanged at Edinburgh. This blood was taken from his head." Alexander Monro Tertius resigned as the Chair of Anatomy in 1846 and thus ended the dynastic reign of Monros at Edinburgh University which had spanned 126 years. He died at the age of 85.

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