Music of the Ancients appeared in 1749, and his Oratio Harveiana in 1760. Sliortly after tliis lie was appointed by the duke of Eichmond physician-general to the royal regiment of artillery and corps of engineers, an appoint ment that gave him constant access to the laboratory of Woolwich, and it was by his advice that a professorship of chemistry was added to the establishment of the college. In his latter years he withdrew altogether into private life. The circle of his friends included some of the most distin guished literary men of the age. His intimacy with Burke had commenced at school, and soon ripened into the warmest friendship. He was also warmly attached to Dr Johnson, to whom he offered an annuity of 100 during the remainder of his life to enable him to visit the Con tinent for the recovery of his health ; and when this offer was declined, he pressed him to reside in his house, as more suited to his health than that in which he then lived. He attended the great moralist on his deathbed. The same generous disposition was manifested in his conduct to Burke, to whom he presented 1000, a sum he had in tended to leave him by will. Dr Brocklesby died suddenly llth December 1797. He left his entire fortune, with the exception of a few legacies, to his two nephews, Dr
Thomas Young and Mr Beeby.BRODERIP, William John, a distinguished writer on natural history, was born in Bristol, probably in 1787. He was educated at the school conducted by the Rev. Samuel Seyer, and proceeded to Oriel College, Oxford, where he began the study of law. He was called to the bar in 1817, and took part for several years in editing the law reports. In 1822 he was appointed by Sir Robert Peel one of the metropolitan police magistrates, a post which he occupied for thirty-four years. All his leisure time was devoted to the favourite study of his earlier days natural history. He was a member of most of the scientific societies, contributed numerous papers to their Transactions, and did much to further the study of zoology in England. He acted for many years as vice-president of the Zoological Society. The zoological articles in the Penny Cyclopaedia were written by him, and made him widely known as an original investigator and able expositor. A series of articles contributed to Fraser s Magazine were reprinted in 1848 as Zoological Recreations, and were followed in 1852 by Leaves from the Note-Book of a Naturalist. Broderip died on the 27th February 1859.
BRODIE, Sir Benjamin Collins, Bart., a distinguished physiologist and surgeon, was born in 1783 at Winterslow, county of Wilts, and died at Broome Park, 21st October 1862, in the 79th year of his age. His paternal grand father, connected with the family of Brodie of Brodie, was born in Banffshire about the year 1710, and came as an adventurer to London, where he acquired considerable wealth as an army clothier. One of his sons, the father of the subject of this notice, was educated at the Charter House, and afterwards at Worcester College, Oxford, where he took holy orders. Here he probably acquired the friend ship of the first Lord Holland, with whom he afterwards lived at Holland House. The second Lord Holland having purchased the estate of Winterslow, Mr Brodie rented a cottage near the same place. The second Lord Holland died in 1774, and directed in his will that Mr Brodie should have offered to him the presentation of the first of three livings which he had in his gift when a vacancy occurred. This event took place in consequence of the death of the incumbent of Winterslow, and Mr Brodie became rector of the parish. In 1775 he married one of the daughters of Mr Collins of Milford, a banker of Salisbury. They had six children, four sons and two daughters, and the sub ject of this sketch was their fourth child.
He received his early education from his father, who appears to have been a man of energy, ability, and method, and at an early age he had acquired a considerable know ledge of the classics. When the time for choosing a profes sion arrived, his father intimated to him that he was intended for that of medicine, and accordingly, in the autumn of 1801, he began to attend the anatomical lectures of the celebrated Abernethy in London. As his family was connected by marriage with several of the leading members of the profession, such as Dr Denman (the father of the first Lord Denman), Dr Baillie, and Sir Richard Croft, the young student enjoyed many advantages of distinguished professional society, but it does not appear that at this period of his life he had any predilection for medical studies or any aptitude for surgical work. The great eminence as an operator to which he afterwards attained was gained, as he himself said, by persistent application and perseverance.
He devoted great attention to the clinical study of disease, and began to make an elaborate series of notes of cases which came under his observation. This habit he continued throughout life, and thus gradually amassed that enormous amount of practical experience which afterwards gave his advice as a consulting surgeon such weight.
Like most young adventurers in the fields of science of that day, he early began to teach. He gave many courses of lectures upon anatomy, not only as it bore on surgical practice, but as a science having important physiological and teleological relations. In 1808 he became assistant- surgeon to St George s Hospital, and he continued on the staff of that institution for over thirty years. This gave him the opportunity of teaching clinically, and he soon acquired a reputation as an able and fluent extempore speaker. In 1810 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and in the following year communicated a series of papers " On the Influence of the Brain on the Action of the Heart, and on the Generation of Animal Heat." In 181 2 he also communicated a paper " On the Mode in which Death is produced by certain Poisons." These papers were founded upon a series of careful physiological experiments, having for their object to determine, first, the relation of the nervous system to the circulatory and nutritive systems in higher animals, and, second, to ascertain, if possible, how poisons produce death. The most important fact ascertained by the first series of experiments was that the stoppage of the heart s action at the moment of death does not depend on the removal of the influence of the brain, but on the arrest of respiration. He also pointed out some important facts which could only be accounted for by supposing that the nervous system has an influence on the production and diffusion of animal heat, an idea not then generally accepted. For these researches he received the Copley medal of the Royal Society in 1811. In 1813 he delivered the Croonian lecture, " On the Effect of the Nerves on the Heart and on the Involuntary Muscles," and in 1814 he contributed another paper " On the Influence of the Nerves of the Eighth Pair on the Secretions of the Stomach." In 1816 he performed many experiments on animals, to ascer tain the influence of bile on the food during its passage through the bowels. These papers comprehend what Brodie accomplished in physiology. They are all characterized by lucidity, conciseness, sound judgment, and a modest inter pretation of results. They are valuable at the present time not so much for the facts they contain, most of which are now incorporated in the general mass of scientific knowledge, but as admirable illustrations of the application of the experimental method of research to physiological questions.
large and lucrative practice, and more especially he quickly
gave evidence of superior powers as an operator, having
