| Description Of Item | This section contains volumes of lectures by Alexander Monro secundus. The volumes have been signed 'A Duncan 1780' on the flyleaf. However, according to the notes by Douglass Taylor in the original manuscripts catalogue, the date 1783 appears on p1747 MON/5/6. To accommodate this anomaly, both dates have been given. The volumes are also described as having the engraved title pages common in the Duncan collection but they do not appear in the extant volumes.
Wording on the bookplate:
This Collection of Manuscript Lectures, by the Founders of the Medical College at Edinburgh, viz. Dr Monro primus, Drs Rutherford, Alston, St Clair and Plummer, consisting of Seventy Volumes, was purchased by Dr Duncan sen. in the year 1772, from Mr John Murray, bookseller in London, for seven guineas.
Dr Duncan has given directions, that after his death, these Manuscript Lectures, together with One Hundred Volumes of Practical Observations on Medicine, in his own handwriting, and which he has employed as notes for Clinical Lectures, shall be presented to the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh, to be deposited in their Library.
His intention is, that this Collection of Manuscripts, may convey to Posterity, a testimony of his own Industry, and of the Abilities of some of his Medical Preceptors, whose Characters, as long as Medicine continues to be cultivated as a Science, will do honour to the College of Physicians and University of Edinburgh. June 4 1812. |