Annual Report of the Council. Ixix 



Broadbent who, long ago a student in the Pine Street School of 

 Medicine, was in 1857 an unsuccessful candidate for the appoint- 

 ment of Junior House Surgeon in the Manchester Royal 

 Infirmary, and subsequently proceeded to London, where he 

 became Physician to St. Mary's Hospital, Physician Extra- 

 ordinary to her late Majesty Queen Victoria and to his present 

 Majesty the King, and was rewarded with a baronetcy in 1893. 

 Dr. Browne's influence on medical and scientific progress was 

 indeed rather personal than through the agency of his pen ; he 

 was an observer and a practical utiliser of the fruits of experience, 

 rather than a theorist. But his influence stimulated thought in 

 others, in regard to which he was tolerant and appreciative. 

 As a medical man he was in many respects in advance of the 

 general ideas of his time. When Pasteur's experiments on the 

 attenuating influence of oxygen were first attracting attention he 

 wrote, characteristically: "That oxygen is the ameliator of 

 virulence is, as you remark, very gratifying, and especially so to 

 you and me ; for without knowing anything of bacteria we have 

 always made much of fresh air." However strongly his philan- 

 thropic instincts tempted him in favour of particular movements, 

 he still demanded a strict recognition of facts. Thus at one 

 time he seemed disposed to co-operate actively with the 

 temperance reformers, but he subsequently complained of a 

 want ot candour and fair play on their part, because they had 

 objected to an admission to the effect that experience had taught 

 him that excessive tea-drinking often did more harm than the 

 excessive consumption of alcohol. While, with reference to 

 the vivisection controversy, he admitted that some of the 

 experiments on dogs and monkeys " really seemed too bad," 

 he ungrudgingly recognised that vast benefit had resulted from 

 experiments on animals. He recorded with pleasure a meet- 

 ing with Pasteur, and also with Mr. (subsequently Sir) John 

 Simon, — formerly his "grinder" at King's College — the latter 

 of whom " discoursed at length on the benefit of cultivating 

 germs," at the International Medical Congress in 1881. 



Notwithstanding the apparent austerity of his life. Dr. 



