Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet

Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie (1783 to 1862) was an English surgeon and physiologist who became the leading London surgeon of his generation. Born at Winterslow in Wiltshire and educated first by his father, he came to London in 1801, studied under John Abernethy and Sir Everard Home, and was appointed assistant surgeon at St George's Hospital in 1808, where he served for more than thirty years. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1810 and published original physiological investigations in the years that followed. His best known book, Pathological and Surgical Observations on the Diseases of the Joints, traced the beginnings of disease in the separate tissues of a joint and treated pain as evidence of organic disease; its influence led surgeons to adopt conservative treatment of joint disease, which reduced the number of amputations. He also wrote on diseases of the urinary organs, on local nervous affections of a surgical character, and on Psychological Inquiries, first published anonymously in 1854. He attended George IV, served as sergeant-surgeon to William IV and Queen Victoria, was made a baronet in 1834, became president of the Royal Society in 1858 and was the first president of the General Medical Council. He died at Broome Park, Surrey, in 1862.