Paris to attend the Hôtel-Dieu, and subsequently to Leyden, where he studied under Herman Boerhaave, and took his degree of M.D., but his name is omitted from the 'Album Studiosorum Academiæ Lugd. Bat.,' printed in 1875. On his return to London he attended the practice of Drs. Wadsworth and Plumtree, and soon began to practise on his own account at Lancaster, and before long became widely known as a surgeon and author. About 1746 he was charged with abetting the Jacobite rebels and thrown into prison, but was discharged without trial, there appearing to have been no ground for his arrest; indeed, he had previously rendered a service to the king by intercepting a messenger to the rebels, and sending the letters to the general of the king's forces, and for this act he had been obliged to keep out of the way of the Pretender's followers. He received much honour in his native town, and was twice elected mayor—in 1747-8 and 1757-8. In his method of practice as a medical man he was remarkably simple, discarding many of the usual nostrums. In private life he was liberal, generous, charitable, and popular; but his love of horse-racing, of conviviality, and of smuggling, which he called gambling with the king, prevented him from reaping or retaining the full fruits of his success. He published several books on horses, written in a rough, unpolished style, but abounding in such sterling sense as to cause him to be placed by John Lawrence at the head of all veterinary writers, ancient or modern. Their dates and titles are as follows: in 1735, an edition of Captain William Burdon's 'Gentleman's Pocket Farrier,' with notes; in 1738, 'Farriery Improved, or a Compleat Treatise upon the Art of Farriery,' 2 vols., which went through ten or more editions; in 1742, 'The Traveller's Pocket Farrier;' in 1751, 'A Treatise on the True Seat of Glanders in Horses, together with the Method of Cure, from the French of De la Fosse.' He wrote also 'The Midwife's Companion,' 1737, which he dedicated to Boerhaave (it was issued with a fresh title-page in 1751); 'Lithiasis Anglicana; or, a Philosophical Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of the Stone and Gravel in Human Bodies,' 1739; a translation from the French of Maitre-Jan on the eye; and some papers on small-pox, &c. On the establishment of the London Medical Society, Dr. Fothergill wrote to request the literary assistance of Bracken, 'for whose abilities,' he observed, 'I have long had a great esteem, and who has laboured more successfully for the improvement of medicine than most of his contemporaries.' Bracken died at Lancaster, 13 Nov. 1764.
[Prefaces to Bracken's writings; Letter to Dr. Preston Christopherson, printed in the Preston Guardian, 4 Sept. 1880; Georgian Era, ii. 561; John Lawrence's Treatise on Horses, 2nd ed. 1802, i. 29-32; information furnished by Alderman W. Roper of Lancaster.]
BRACKENBURY, Sir EDWARD (1785–1864), lieutenant-colonel, a direct descendant from Sir Robert Brackenbury, lieutenant of the Tower of London in the time of Richard III, was second son of Richard Brackenbury of Aswardby, Lincolnshire, by his wife Janetta, daughter of George Gunn of Edinburgh, and was born in 1785. Having entered the army as an ensign in the 61st regiment in 1803, and become a lieutenant on 8 Dec. in the same year, he served in Sicily, in Calabria, at Scylla Castle and at Gibraltar, 1807-8, and in the Peninsula from 1809 to the end of the war in 1814. At the battle of Salamanca he took a piece of artillery from the enemy, guarded by four soldiers, close to their retiring column, without any near or immediate support, and in many other important engagements conducted himself with distinguished valour. As a reward for his numerous services he received the war medal with nine clasps.
On 22 July 1812 he was promoted to a captaincy, and after the conclusion of the war was attached to the Portuguese and Spanish army from 25 Oct. 1814 to 25 Dec. 1816, when he was placed on half-pay. He served as a major in the 28th foot from 1 Nov. 1827 to 31 Jan. 1828, when he was again placed on half-pay. His foreign services were further recognised by his being made a knight of the Portuguese order of the Tower and Sword in 1824, a knight of the Spanish order of St. Ferdinand, and a commander of the Portuguese order of St. Bento d'Avis.
Brackenbury, who was knighted by the king at Windsor Castle on 26 Aug. 1836, was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for the county of Lincoln. He attained to the rank of lieutenant-colonel on 10 Jan. 1837, and ten years afterwards sold out of the army. He died at Skendleby Hall, Lincolnshire, on 1 June 1864.
He was twice married: first, on 9 June 1827, to Maria, daughter of the Rev. Edward Bromhead of Reepham near Lincoln, and, secondly, in March 1847, to Eleanor, daughter of Addison Fenwick of Bishopwearmouth, Durham, and widow of W. Brown Clark of Belford Hall, Northumberland. She died in 1862.
[Gent. Mag. 1864, part ii. 123; Cannon's The Sixty-first Regiment (1837), pp. 24, 31, 67.]
