Colin Munro

Colin Munro shares a Y chromosome with the ‘Mad Munros’, physicians at Bedlam, and James Monroe, fifth US president, but sadly has not been related to the subject of his article here for at least six centuries. He is a retired dermatologist.

On​ 21 December 1792 the Shaw Ardaseer, bound for Madras, was taking on cargo at the mouth of the Hooghly River near Calcutta. ‘With a view of diverting the tedium of a ship at anchor’, four passengers, among them a young man called Munro, went ashore to hunt deer on Saugor Island. Another member of the party, Captain Henry Conran, described what followed in a letter to a...

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