Address of Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, ... the president, delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, on Wednesday, November 30, 1859.

  • Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Date:
1859
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address of Sir Benjamin C. Brodie, ... the president, delivered at the anniversary meeting of the Royal Society, on Wednesday, November 30, 1859. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ]2 matters which have no special or exclusive relation to our body, you will, I hope, accept it as a sufficient apology that I have done so under the impression that whatever relates to the advancement of knowledge generally cannot be altogether uninteresting to those who are the living representatives of the great men by whom the Royal Society was founded, and who themselves now constitute the most ancient scientific institution in the world. Looking at what more particularly concerns ourselves, I may con- gratulate you on the results obtained during the last year. In the volume of the * Philosophical Transactions’ which is nowin the course of publication we find that there is scarcely any department of phy- sical knowledge which is not honourably represented; at the same time that, besides the abstracts of the principal papers, many inves- tigations which have not been deemed to be of sufficient importance, or sufficiently original to have a place in our annual volume, but which nevertheless are of considerable interest, are recorded and published from time to time in the smaller volume bearing the title of ‘The Royal Society’s Proceedings.’ By means of this less pretentious publication many facts, many thoughts and suggestions are preserved, which might otherwise have been neglected or lost, but which, being thus pre- served, may prove to be of much value hereafter. Our weekly meetings have been well attended, and have been rendered more attractive by a practice which is not altogether new, but which has been more generally adopted than heretofore during the last Session ; I allude to that of the authors of papers communicated to us giving an oral or viva voce explanation of their contents ; those explanations being ren- dered more intelligible by a reference to diagrams, or to the apparatus used for experiments, and even by experiments actually displayed. Such illustrations are useful both to the authors and to others, by causing the subject-matter of the several communications to be better understood ; and they are useful in another way, inasmuch as they lead to conversations and discussions, and to the interchange of opinion at the time, from which we may all of us derive something to think of, and reflect on afterwards. Having occupied so much of your time already, I do not feel jus- tified in making a further demand on it by entering into a recapitu- lation of what has been done in the way of scientific discovery
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