he did well all those things that he found to do. He was a successful teacher; he prepared his lectures carefully; he was always on hand; he went straight to the point; he won and held the attention of his pupils. They went to him for knowledge, and they were never disappointed. Nothing connected with his calling was small and insignificant to him. Out of the veriest trifles he gathered something of human interest, and thus held it up to his hearers. He was a convincing writer. Though a firm believer and practicer of original investigation and observation, and so not a man of text-book knowledge, he was always a great reader of good literature, and was thoroughly versed in the best work of his profession. He attended scrupulously to the work in hand, and undertook nothing that he could not perform. At the comparatively early age of fiftyseven he retired from the hospital, not because he was infirm or beyond work, but because an engrossing practice and the numberless calls upon his time led him to feel that the interests of the hospital would thus best be served. In middle age and with advancing years he was constantly receiving high honors from home and foreign scientific bodies, and was in demand especially as a presiding officer. In this capacity he served diverse associations, most conspicuous of which were the Royal Society and the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society. With us the functions of a presiding officer seem to have become insignificant enough, but with Sir Benjamin Brodie the position was no sinecure; he believed in debates, and encouraged discussion that one thing which, rightly carried on, is the life of such meetings. And those meetings were largely attended. He cut short prosers, he suggested new lines of thought, and was great indeed when, the talk failing, his own chance came to sum up and elucidate the whole matter. There was always discussion when he presided. He would talk if no one else would begin, and the extent of his information, both general and minute, on nearly all subjects was a constant wonder and delight. He rarely missed his meetings, and he was familiar with the subject in hand always. It is in such pursuits that we must fancy Brodie to ourselves as a leader and teacher of his fellows, as the great type and exponent of our art to our fellowmen. Forty years ago the Duke meant Wellington to an Englishman; the Great Surgeon meant Brodie. He grew to be an exemplar. In all things he saw something of good. From all men he extracted the best. In learning he found the joy of living, and he met death with a perfect courage. To such a man-patient, industrious, brilliant, wise, sound scholar and lucid teacher - his friends dedicated the Brodie Medal and inscribed these lines of Lucretius: "E tenebris tantis tam clarum extollere lumen, 1 "De Rerum Natura," iii, 1, 2. JOHN COLLINS WARREN1 AMONG the men of our grandfathers' generation, few led more steadily laborious and useful lives than did John Collins Warren. He was born in Boston in 1778, on the 1st of August, the eldest son of that interesting John Warren, who served in the Revolution and founded the Harvard Medical School. If ever there was a man blessed, or cursed, as you choose, with the New England conscience, it was John Collins Warren. His father wanted to keep him out of medicine, and he himself had no natural liking for it. We have it over his own signature that he was indolent and hated study; yet, once having put his hand to the plow, he never turned back, but devoted himself heart and soul, steadily, faithfully, without enthusiasm, to his profession, for more than fifty years. And he certainly had a very marked influence upon general practice in Boston, upon teaching at Harvard, upon surgery at the Massachusetts General Hospital, and upon his professional brethren in this country. Intellectually he was unlike any of the other early American surgeons, though in certain elements of training and experience he might be compared to Valentine Mott of New York. Like Mott, he was the son of a doctor, he was born and reared in an old, well-established community, and in a medical atmos Read before the Johns Hopkins Hospital Historical Club, Febru ary 9, 1903. phere; he was thoroughly educated for his work, and he spent his life in the midst of congenial surroundings, social and professional. We probably know as much about him as we could know about any man of his temperament; for he had a steady appreciation of his own position in life and took copious biographical notes of his own career; those notes were elaborately edited by his brother soon after his death. Inheriting a strong position from his distinguished father, he had a constant and proper pride in supporting it, and the combination of a sound understanding, wide culture, laborious industry, and cager grasp of opportunity, together with the fortunate circumstance that for many years he met with little serious professional competition, secured for him in early life the unique position of surgical autocrat of New England. His own biographical notes contain abundant material for a delightful memoir of his times, if only they had fallen into the hands of a Trevelyan or a Lang. Unfortunately, his editor was too much bent on eulogy for the popular success of the book. In spite of these drawbacks, we have a picture of a very important and very full career, and of a man familiar in his day to doctors throughout the land. Warren's youth was passed in surroundings which seem ancient to us now. His grandson and namesake has given us a charming sketch of those old days, 1 1 "Reminiscences of an Old New England Surgeon" (Maryland Medical Journal, 1901, vol. 44, p. 45), by John Collins Warren, M.D., F.R.C.S. taking his material from his ancestor's own notes, which "At the period when I left college and became an inhabitant of Boston it was thought necessary to undergo the operation of a barber half an hour every day. This consumed much time, besides the horrid consequences of carrying on one's head a quantity of curls, pomatum, flour, and the long cue or heavy club. "The dress at that time was a colored coat with metal buttons, usually yellow; colored waistcoat, short breeches, buttoning at the knees; long boots with white tops, and when riding on horseback a pair of leather breeches instead of pantaloons, of drab cloth. "These yellow breeches were daily cleaned with yellow clay, which required that the coats should never be brought in contact with them. Then a short ruffle at the breast and about the wrists, a white cravat, filled out with what was called a pudding, the use of which, from the effect of habit, could not be dispensed with for some years. "Cocked hats were very much worn at the time, but not by the young. "Gentlemen of a certain age wore wigs, which were sent to the barbers once a week to be fresh dressed, so that on Saturday night we saw the barbers' boys carrying home immense bundles of wig-boxes as a preparation for going to church on Sunday. "Physicians who had much business in those days rode on horseback. Riding in a chaise was very rare, and in a four-wheeled carriage still more so. My father rode on horseback till a few years before his death. |