xn THE " MEDICAL ESSAYS," EDINBURGH 139 



Medical science was at first included in the scope of these 

 societies. In the Royal Society members of the medical 

 profession have always been prominent, and have given to 

 it some distinguished presidents ; and very many medical 

 papers were contributed to the society in former times. It 

 is not easy to say when the need for separate associations for 

 medical research was first felt. The Ecole de Chirurgie was 

 set up in Paris in 1731, and a Royal Academy of Medicine at 

 Madrid in the following year, but it is probable that these were 

 mainly colleges or teaching bodies. 



The earliest British medical societies seem to have been 

 small committees which collected papers on medical subjects 

 for publication. Such was a society at Edinburgh, of which 

 Monro primus was evidently the soul, and which began in the 

 year 1731 to compile yearly volumes of Medical Essays and 

 Observations, which were dedicated to its exemplar, the Royal 

 Society. These contain reports on the weather, on epidemic 

 diseases, and on recent medical literature, with numerous 

 essays on physic, surgery and kindred topics. FothergilTs 

 paper on the Neutral Salts of Plants, already referred to, was 

 contributed to the fifth and last volume, issued about 1743. 1 

 By this time the society had been merged in a new and larger 

 body formed " for the improvement of natural knowledge " 

 in general, and afterwards known as the Philosophical Society 

 (of Edinburgh) ; in 1783 it became the Royal Society of 

 Edinburgh. A later Edinburgh Society of Physicians 



Kaiser Leopold Academy were first published, at several German centres, 

 in 1712. Similar Acta, collections of scientific papers, began to be issued 

 from Nuremberg (1727), Basle (1751), Magdeburg (1755) and Giessen (1771). 

 On the Royal Society, see the Histories by Sprat, 1667 ; and Weld, 1848 ; 

 also Record of Roy. Soc., 3rd ed., 1912. On other societies see Minerva, 1913- 

 1914 ; A. Dechambre, Societes Savantes, in his Diet. Encycl. des Sciences Mid. 

 ser. iii. vol. x. 97 ; Puschmann, Arztliche Vereine in Alter und Neuer Zeit, 

 in Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift (1893), vi. 790 ; Fotherby, Medical Associa- 

 tions, Oration before the Hunterian Society, 1869 ; The Medical Register (London, 

 1779 and 1783) ; Biese, Literaturgeschichte, i. 371 ; Hallam, Literature of 

 Europe. On the Dublin Philosophical Society, 1683 to 1686, see Gilbert, 

 Hist. Dublin, ii. 13, 173, and App. II. 



1 The Medical Essays and Observations were much esteemed, and went 

 through five editions, the last being printed in 1771. Selections were published 

 in a French translation at Paris, and hi Latin at Hanover. Monro's contribu- 

 tions were very numerous ; he was seconded by Plummer and other colleagues 

 in Edinburgh, but more so by Drs. T. Simson and G. Martin of St. Andrews, 

 by the surgeons, J. Jamieson of Kelso and J. Paisley of Glasgow, and by 

 Dr. E. Barry of Cork. The work was written in English, but Latin was 

 discarded with regret, since " to write good English cannot be expected from 

 our country." There are singular records in some of the volumes. Thus 

 there is a detailed account by a surgeon of a Caesarean Section performed by 

 one Mary Donally, an illiterate woman, in 1739, by means of a razor ; she 

 held the edges of the six-inch wound with her hand " till one went a mile and 



