OF ARTS AND SCIENCES: MAY 26, 1863. 139 



Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, Bart., a Foreign Honorary Mem- 

 ber of this Academy, and recently President of the Royal Society, 

 died, October 21st, 1862, at the ripe age of eighty years. Of that 

 remarkable trio of British surgeons of this century, distinguished alike 

 for their high professional and scientific attainments, Sir Astley 

 Cooper, Sir Benjamin Brodie, and Mr. William Lawrence, the latter 

 now alone remains. Sir Benjamin Brodie was born at Winterslow, 

 Wiltshire, June 9th, 1783. He commenced the study of medicine in 

 London, under the distinguished anatomists Wilson and Thomas, at 

 the Hunterian School of Anatomy, in Great Windmill Street, and 

 subsequently became the pupil of Sir Everard Home, and at a later 

 period his assistant. His first scientific paper was a communication 

 made to the Royal Society, through Sir Everard Home, in 1809, the 

 year before his election as a Fellow of the Society. During the next 

 five years he published in the Philosophical Transactions a series of 

 papers giving the results of experimental researches upon the agency 

 of the brain in maintaining the heart's action, in the processes of 

 secretion, and in the production of animal heat ; upon the mode of 

 action of poisons on the animal economy ; and upon the influence ex- 

 erted by the pneumo-gastric nerve over the secretions of the alimen- 

 tary canal. These papers gained for him European fame as a physi- 

 ologist. But great as was his success in this department of science, he 

 yielded to the increasing demands of practice, and devoted his whole 

 energies to his chosen pursuit of surgery. He nevertheless always 

 retained a deep interest in the subjects of these early investigations, 

 and after his retirement from active practice he collected his Physio- 

 logical Essays in a volume, which he republished in the year 1851, 

 with corrections and additions. 



His first and most important contribution to surgery is his classical 

 " Observations on the Diseases of the Joints," the first outlines of 

 which appeared in the Medico-Chirurgical Transactions for 1813 and 

 the two subsequent years, and of which five editions were published, 

 the last revised, and in part rewritten, in the year 1850. When he 

 undertook this work, the whole subject was involved in the greatest 

 confusion, and the terms " white-swelling," " scrofulous joints," &c. 

 " were used without any well-defined meaning, and almost indiscrimi- 

 nately, so that the same name was frequently applied to different 

 diseases, and the same disease distinguished by different appellations." 

 This confusion he unravelled, and first established the indications of 

 treatment upon the firm basis of accurate diagnosis. 



