140 PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY 



His next surgical work was a course of " Lectures on the Diseases 

 of the Urinary Organs," published in the year 1832 ; it has gone 

 throusrh four editions, and is still one of the standard works on that 

 subject. In these lectures he considered the operation of lithotrity, 

 which had been performed for the first time upon the living subject by 

 the distinguished Civiale eight years before, and which had been brought 

 to perfection by the improved instruments of Ammusat and Heurteloup. 

 The novel idea of crushing the stone in the bladder, as a substitute for 

 its extraction by a cutting operation, encountered bitter opposition from 

 many of the leading surgeons of the day, who had acquired great 

 dexterity in the performance of lithotomy, and therefore regarded with 

 distrust the new method, which threatened to supersede it. Brodie 

 treated the subject in the spirit of a philosopher, and gave it as his 

 opinion that lithotrity might ultimately take the place of the older 

 operation ; and he lived, not only to see it used by others, but to 

 employ it himself with perfect success. In fact, with the exception 

 of a few special cases, as in young children, in whom lithotomy is an 

 operation of comparatively little danger, and in cases of very large or 

 very hard calculi, and perhaps in a few other instances, lithotrity is 

 now the regular method. 



A third surgical work, published in 1837, is devoted to the study of 

 certain painful aifections, principally of the joints, which occur, for the 

 most part, in women, and in those who are more or less under the in- 

 fluence of the nervous system. In these " Hysterical Affections of the 

 Joints," he showed that there is little or no local disease, and that the 

 violent and protracted local treatment formerly in vogue, and which 

 often ended in amputation, ought to be altogether abandoned, and the 

 disease treated by constitutional remedies of a tonic and invigorating 

 character. 



Sir Benjamin's last work, and that by which he is best known to liter- 

 ary and scientific men in general, is his " Psychological Inquiries, being 

 a Series of Essays intended to illustrate some Points in the Physical and 

 Moral Nature of Man." In this charming work he lays open, in the 

 familiar form of dialogue, the operations of his own vigorous intellect, 

 and displays that rare combination of sound judgment with the highest 

 powers of observation which constitutes the true philosopher. Writing 

 less than many others, he wrote more ; for every sentence is pregnant 

 with meaning, and every well-established premise leads to the wisely- 

 drawn conclusion. 



