legally a professor until 1730. As Dr. Potterfield, as far as ascertained, did not lecture, the six other gentlemen who have been named may be regarded as, de facto, founders of the Medical Department of the University of Edinburgh.
The only degree conferred by this University was that of Doctor of Medicine; with reference to which we are informed that “the Medical Faculty being now constituted, degrees were conferred after a much more regular manner, and, with some slight variations, the forms adopted at Leyden, where the Professors themselves had been educated, were preferred.” To exhibit the requirements of the school, the following rule may be cited:—
“The Candidate must have attended the lectures given by the Professors of Anatomy and Surgery, Chemistry, Botany, Materia Medica and Pharmacy, the Theory and Practice of Medicine, and Clinical Medicine in the Hospital.”[1] The requisite examinations followed. It appears to have required nearly twenty years to thus far perfect the course of instruction in the school that must be regarded as the parent of our own.[2]
It would seem that difficulties in prosecuting anatomical investigation and teaching beset the efforts of the profession in Scotland as well as in this country. The coincidence in this respect is worthy of notice, evincing the prejudices of the populace in connection with matters deeply involving its own welfare and interests, and the mode of eradicating them by judicious management. By the historian of the University of Edinburgh, the account of Mr. Monro’s troubles is thus given: “Mr. Monro never desisted from exerting himself in the line of his profession, with that ability, diligence, and steadiness which secured the approbation of all. In some respects, however, he had a difficult part to perform. The population of the town then amounted to only thirty thousand, and he had inspired his pupils with such a taste for anatomy and the opportunities they possessed were so limited that they were uneasy under the restraint. In April, 1725, however, some of the more enterprising of the students,
