Dr. (now Sir Henry) Acland has given in the Proceedings of the Royal Society perhaps the best survey of Brodie’s character and work:—“Neither as scientific man, nor as surgeon, nor as author was he so remarkable as he appears when viewed as he was—a complete man necessarily engaged in various callings. It was impossible to see him acting in any capacity without instinctively feeling that there he would do his duty, and do it well. Nor could he be imagined in a false position. A gentleman, according to his own definition of that word, he did to others that which he would desire to be done to him, respecting them as he respected himself. Simple in his manners, he gained confidence at once; accustomed to mix with the poorest in the hospital and with the noblest in their private abodes, he sympathised with the better qualities of each,—valued all, and despised nothing but moral meanness. Though as a boy he was retiring and modest, he was happy in the company of older persons, and, as he grew older, loved in his turn to help the young. ‘I hear you are ill,’ he wrote once in the zenith of his life to a hospital student of whom he did not then know much; ‘no one will take better care of you than I; come to my country house till you are well;’ and the student stayed there two months. He was thought by some reserved—he was modest; by others hasty—he valued time, and could not give to trifles that which belonged to real suffering; he was sometimes thought impatient, when his quick glance had already told him more than the patient could either describe or understand. Unconscious of self, of strong common-sense, confident of his ground or not entering thereon, seeing in every direction, modest, just, sympathetic, he lived for one great end, the lessening of disease. For this object no labour was too great, no patience too long, no science too difficult. He felt indeed his happiness to be in a life of exertion. As a professional man he valued science because it so often points the way to that which is practically useful to many; but as a scientific man his one object was the truth, which he pursued for its own sake, wholly irrespective of any other reward which might or might not follow on discovery. He had not the common faults of common men, for he had not their objects, nor their instinct for ease, nor their prejudices; though he became rich, he had not unduly sought riches; though he was greatly distinguished, he had not desired fame; he was beloved, not having courted popularity. What he was himself, that he allowed other men to be, till he found them otherwise. He saw weak points in his profession, but he saw them as the débris from the mountains of knowledge and wisdom, of benevolence and of self-denial, of old traditional skill ever growing and always purifying,—those eternal structures on which are founded true surgery and medicine. If ever he was bitter in society, it was when they were under-valued; if ever