xliii 



There is no profession where a man may in his lifetime be so 

 distinguished, and leave hehind so slight record of his life, as the 

 profession of Medicine or of Surgery. With the death of the man 

 there perishes in such case a vast amount of personal skill and 

 observation, which, being unwritten, and indeed not capable of 

 being written, can be amassed again only by the combination of 

 similar talent, opportunity, and industry in another individual. Nor 

 is even this always possible. There are epochs in human knowledge 

 as in human affairs ; and a man may so turn to account the pecu- 

 liar circumstances of his epoch as to attain not only just celebrity, 

 but a certain masterly power which he could not have attained with- 

 out such a combination of events. 



Such considerations must be present to our minds if we would 

 form a correct estimate of Sir BenjaminBrodie. He furnishes a rare 

 instance of a man who, having in early life had no particular advan- 

 tages on the one hand, nor any great drawbacks on the other, ob- 

 tained the highest place in a learned profession, as well as the 

 greatest honour which English Science can bestow on a scientific 

 man the Presidency of the Royal Society. 



A brief record of his progress, considered not only as that of an 

 adept in science and a master in the noblest of arts, but as a man, 

 will be well worthy a place in the ' Proceedings ' of the Royal Society 

 a Society which is not only directly concerned in advancing human 

 knowledge for its own sake, but indirectly also in interesting the most 

 complete minds in the advancement of that knowledge. It must set 

 a special value on the example of one who proved to demonstration, 

 by a long and admirable career, that devotion to purely scientific 

 pursuits, and a deep interest in all that concerns scientific progress, 

 may coexist with eminent professional skill, with a philanthropic 

 spirit, and an enlarged religious mind. 



Benjamin Collins Brodie was born in the year 1783, at Winterslow, 

 in the county of Wilts. His father was Rector of the parish. He 

 had three brothers and two sisters, being himself the fourth child. 

 His father was a man of energy and ability, and brought both to 

 bear on the education of his children, in whose well-being he took 

 the deepest interest. He instructed them himself; by his own 

 example he trained up his children in habits of industry ; above all 

 he taught them in many ways from their earliest years to think and 



