'Discourses on the Human Physiology' by Alexander Monro primus (1697-1767).

INTRODUCTION Historians have long taken it for granted that the teaching in the early Edinburgh medical faculty was founded on the system of Boerhaave, which was in turn based on Newtonian mechanism. All of the first-appointed teachers had studied at Leyden, and they brought its traditions back with them.' My own examination of the evidence, particularly that provided by surviving student lecture-notes, amply confirms this. Monro primus was quite explicit on the point. We find him saying, for example, in 1731/2, "I shall as much as I can follow Dr Boerhaave's method which may perhaps be of the moreuse to you who are att and to be att his Institutions"; and again in the later 1740s, "I shall follow Dr Boerhaave's method in his Institutiones, excepting some small variations . . ". 2 St Clair's lectures were year after year a commentary in Latin on the Institutiones.3 Plummer and Innes commented on the Aphorisms.4 Notes taken