LECTURES ILLUSTRATIVE OF VARIOUS SUBJECTS IN PATHOLOGY AND SURGERY. By Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, Bart., F.R.S., Serjeant-Surgeon to the Queen; Surgeon to H. R. H. Prince Albert; Foreign Correspondent of the Institute of France. Octavo, pp. 411. London: Longmans, 1846.
IT has often been noticed with regret that the eminent members of our profession who are engaged in extensive practice too frequently neglect the great opportunities they possess of enriching the annals of medical science and practice. This cannot be said of the distinguished author of the volume before us, who shows a due sense of the responsibilities of his position by occasionally recording, for the benefit of his brethren, the results of a large experience; and all must admit that his writings fully justify the great reputation which. he enjoys, both in the profession and with the public. To the School of St. George's Hospital, which Sir Benjamin Brodie has always acknowledged himself indebted to for the opportunities of cultivating Pathology and Surgery, he has certainly never been wanting, and since he ceased to give a complete and systematic course of surgical lectures to the students of that institution, he has annually addressed to them a limited number of lectures on the same subjects, which have been continued since he resigned the office of surgeon to the hospital. We learn from the Preface that the present volume contains several of these discourses, which have already appeared in the weekly medical journals, but have undergone various corrections and received such additions as the author's later experience and more mature reflection have enabled him to furnish. Writings of the character of these Lectures are well adapted as a medium for the development of the opinions of an experienced observer, and they are more agreeable to read, and perhaps more profitable to practitioners, than discourses of a more systematic description. The novelty and interest of these Lectures are however much diminished by their previous publication. It sometimes happens that the writings of an author of no note when published in a weekly periodical, though displaying talent, are at the time little read and are soon forgotten, and their disinterment after the writer has acquired some celebrity may be desirable to establish his reputation. But the productions of Sir Benjamin Brodie are little likely to be thus neglected. We know that many of the principles of surgical practice inculcated in the work before us have been served up in No. 105