John Monro was a physician and specialist in insanity who was the physician at the primary English mental hospital Bethlem Hospital, better known as Bedlam.

Family

John Monro was the eldest son of James Monro, who was the physician of the Bethlem Hospital until his death in 1752, and his wife Elizabeth. James was the first of the Monro family of physicians who formed a dynasty of mad-doctors between 1728 and 1855.

Monro had four sons with his wife, Elizabeth: John, Charles, James, and Thomas

Thomas Monro

Thomas Monro was a British art collector and patron as well as Physician to George III. He was Principal Physician of the Bethlem Royal Hospital in London but resigned in June 1816 as a result of scandal when he was accused of ‘wanting in humanity’ towards his patients.Monro was best known as a...

 and a daughter Charlotte.

Career

John Monroe graduated from St. John's College, Oxford in 1737 and received a Radcliffe travelling fellowship which enabled him to study in Europe for ten years, which included Edinburgh, Leiden, Paris and Rome. He was formally appointed as joint physician at Bethlem and Bridewell in 1751 to aid his ailing father, although he had been a governor since 1748, and as physician when his father died a year later. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians

Royal College of Physicians

The Royal College of Physicians of London was founded in 1518 as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518 - the first medical institution in England to receive a royal charter...

 in 1753.

Bethlem had lost its institutional monopoly for the treatment of insanity by the creation of St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics

St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics

St Luke's Hospital for Lunatics was founded in London in 1750 for the treatment of incurable pauper lunatics by a group of philanthropic apothecaries and others. It was the second public institution in London created to look after mentally ill people, after the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlem...

 in 1751 and in 1758 he responded quickly to the physician of that hospital, William Battie

William Battie

William Battie , 1 September 1703–13 June 1776, was an English physician who published in 1758 the first lengthy book on the treatment of mental illness, A Treatise on Madness, and by extending methods of treatment to the poor as well as the affluent, helped raise psychiatry to a respectable...

, who published a Treatise on Madness in 1758, which appeared to criticise the practices of Bethlem. His Remarks on Dr Battie's Treatise have been characterised as narrow and reactionary but he has recently been defended in the first biography published about him in recent years.

`Notwithstanding we are told in this treatise, that madness rejects all general methods, I will venture to say, that the most adequate and constant cure of it is by evacuation; which can alone be determined by the constitution of the patient and the judgment of the physician. The evacuation by vomiting is infinitely preferable to any other, if repeated experience is to be depended on...'

One criticism of Bedlam at this time was that it allowed paying visitors to observe the lunatics and despite the banning of this practice at St. Luke's, Monro didn't restrict it until 1770.