vii 



viating aim at precision and thoroughness of knowledge in all his studies. 

 The character he bore as a student was honourably maintained at the Uni- 

 versity of London, where he took the degree of M.B. in 1847, and of M.D. 

 in the following year. In the meantime he was appointed Assistant De- 

 monstrator of Anatomy, and in 1850 Medical Tutor, at King's College, 

 which appointment he held until 1853, when he was elected Lecturer on 

 Forensic Medicine at St. Thomas's Hospital. 



To St. Thomas's medical school Dr. Brinton became permanently attached 

 by his being elected Physician to the Hospital in 1860, and appointed 

 Lecturer on Physiology, having previously been associated with the late 

 Mr. Grainger in that lectureship. He soon proved himself to be an able 

 and accomplished teacher of physiology ; and those who have heard him 

 lecture speak with admiration of his appropriate language and agreeable 

 delivery, and of the ready power and happy effect with which he used his 

 pencil to illustrate his oral instructions. 



From 1852 until his appointment to St. Thomas's in 1860, Dr. Brinton was 

 Physician to the Royal Free Hospital, where he enjoyed large opportunities 

 of medical observation ; and during his tenure of that office he published in 

 'The Lancet' a series of ''Clinical Remarks," which were much valued. 

 He speedily rose in the estimation of his professional brethren and gained 

 the confidence of the public, so that for some years before his death he en- 

 joyed a much larger share of consulting practice than usually falls to the 

 lot of young physicians of his standing. 



When quite a young man Dr. Brinton contributed several articles to Dr. 

 Todd's ' Cyclopeedia of Anatomy and Physiology,' and translated Valentin's 

 'Text-book of Physiology' from the German. In 1857 he published a 

 work on ' Ulcer of the Stomach,' and, two years later, one of more ex- 

 tended scope, on 'Diseases of the Stomach ;' this v^^as followed by a treatise 

 on ' Food and Digestion.' These works were the result of a careful study of 

 a subject to which he had given special attention. He entertained original 

 views on the natural and perverted movements of the alimentary canal, and 

 on the nature and cause of intestinal obstruction, and gave an exposition of 

 his doctrine in the Croonian Lectures which he delivered before the Col- 

 lege of Physicians. 



Three papers by Dr. Brinton were read to the Royal Society, of which 

 abstracts were published in the 'Proceedings ; ' viz. " Contributions to the 

 Physiology of the Alimentary Canal" (1848), " On the Dentate Body of 

 the Cerebellum" (1852), and "Experiments and Observations on the 

 Structure and Function of the Stomach in the Vertebrate Class" (1861). 

 He was elected a Fellow of the Society in June 1864. 



In a memoir of Dr. Brinton which appeared in ' The Lancet ' soon after 

 his death, from which chiefly we have derived the substance of this brief 

 notice, it is mentioned that among his numerous tastes and acquirements 

 was a love of mountaineering, and that he was a member of the Alpine 

 Club, and contributed two papers to the second series of "Peak?, Passes, 



