Autograph medical prescription from Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie dated 1846

BRODIE, Sir Benjamin Collins (1783–1862). Autograph medical prescription / therapeutic memorandum, signed. 11 December 1846.
 
Single sheet, c.120 × 120 mm. ink manuscript on pale cream paper, folded twice, with later docket at head (“Copied … 12th …”), the body entirely in Brodie’s hand and signed “B. C. Brodie”, dated “Dec. 11 1846”.  Light creasing from original folds, minor spotting, otherwise well preserved and fully legible. Very good. 
 
The text from Brodie is a clinical formula beginning with the standard prescription symbol, referring to iodine and an acetic preparation, with dosage (“3i”), written in the concise, abbreviated style of mid-19th-century hospital practice. 
 
Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie was the leading English surgeon of the first half of the nineteenth century, President of the Royal College of Surgeons and Surgeon-in-Ordinary to the sovereign, whose clinical writings and teaching at St George’s Hospital helped to establish modern scientific surgery and therapeutics. Autograph material in which Brodie is seen at work as a physician—issuing or recording a specific prescription rather than corresponding socially—is scarce.