Brodie , Sir , Benjamin Collins , 1783-1862 , 1st Baronet , physiologist and surgeon

Benjamin Brodie was born in 1783. He was educated by his father. At the age of 18 he began anatomical studies by attending the lectures of John Abernethy at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London, and in 1801-1802 the lectures of James Wilson at the Hunterian School in Great Windmill Street. He learned pharmacy with William Clifton LSA, in Little Newport Street. He became a close friend of the surgeon William Lawrence (1783-1867). Brodie entered St George's Hospital in 1803, as a surgical pupil of Sir Everard Home, and was appointed House Surgeon in 1805. He was then Demonstrator to the Anatomical School. He assisted Home in private operations and his researches on comparative anatomy with William Clift at the Hunterian Museum in the RCSEng. He continued his study of anatomy at the Great Windmill Street School, where he demonstrated jointly with Wilson until 1812. He also delivered an annual course of surgical lectures at the school, from 1808-1830. He was elected Assistant Surgeon to St George's Hospital in 1808, and Senior Surgeon,1822-1840. He bagan private practice in 1809, in a house in Sackville Street, Piccadilly, London. He moved to Savile Row in 1819. He became the personal surgeon of King George IV (having assisted at an operation to remove a tumour from his scalp) in 1828, and was made sergeant-surgeon under William IV in 1830. He continued under Queen Victoria. Brodie supported the foundation of the London Medical Gazette in 1827, to counter the assertions of Thomas Wakley, in The Lancet, that hospital surgeons and the council of the RCSEng were corrupt. Brodie was admitted MRCS in 1805. He was Professor of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology at the College, 1819-1823. He became President in 1844. He was elected a member of the Society for the Improvement of Medical and Chirurgical Knowledge (a club that John Hunter had helped to found). He was elected to the Royal Society in 1810, and was awarded the Copley Medal in 1811. He was a member of the Royal Society's select dining club, the Assistant Society for the Improvement of Animal Chemistry (with Home, Humphry Davy and others), 1808-1825. He was President of the Royal Medical and Chirurgical Society in 1839. He became the first President of the General Medical Council in 1858, and in the same year he was the first surgeon to be elected President of the Royal Society (he resigned in 1861). He died in 1862.