Born May 20th, 1828, the eldest son of Thomas Egerton Bryant, a general practitioner in Kennington who was Surgeon to the Lambeth Workhouse, Fothergillian Medallist in 1836, and President of the Medical Society of London in 1837. He had been educated at Guy's Hospital, and was interested in morbid anatomy, presenting specimens to the museum, some of which are still preserved. Thomas Bryant was educated at King's College and apprenticed to Thomas Oliver Duke, who also practised in Kennington and was Surgeon to the Lambeth Workhouse. He entered Guy's Hospital in 1846, and dressed for Aston Key (q.v.). In 1857 he was elected Assistant Surgeon, and two years later began to teach operative surgery, but he did not become full Surgeon until 1871, a post he held until 1888, when he retired at the age limit and was appointed Consulting Surgeon. From 1871-1888 Bryant lectured on systematic surgery. His exposition was clear, he marshalled his facts carefully and methodically, illustrated them from his own experience and avoided speaking above the apprehension of his audience. His lectures, therefore, were instructive as well as interesting, and were popular with the students. In common with his surgical colleagues he gave annually a course of clinical lectures to the senior students. In these he spoke as if he were at the bedside, and had the art of making his audience feel as though they saw the very case. These clinical lectures he continued to deliver for some time after he had retired from the active staff. He served as Surgeon to the Bolingbroke Hospital, Wandsworth Common, for some years after his retirement from Guy's. He was elected a Member of the Council of the Royal College of Surgeons from 1880-1904, a Member of the Court of Examiners from 1882-1892, a representative of the Court on the Board of Examiners in Dental Surgery in 1877, and a representative of the Royal College of Surgeons on the General Medical Council from 1891-1904, and during a part of this time he acted as joint Hon. Treasurer. He was Hunterian Professor of Surgery in 1888 and Bradshaw Lecturer in 1889. In 1893, on the occasion of the centenary of the death of John Hunter, he delivered the Hunterian Oration in the presence of Their Royal Highnesses the Prince of Wales, afterwards His Majesty King Edward VII, and the Duke of York, now His Majesty King George V. In 1896 he was appointed Surgeon Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, and later Surgeon in Ordinary to King Edward VII. He was President of the College from 1891-1894. In 1892 the University of Dublin conferred upon him the honorary degree of M.D., and in the same year he was given the honorary M.Ch, by the Royal University of Ireland and the honorary Fellowship of the Royal College of Surgeons of Ireland. Bryant attended and took an active part in the discussions of many of the Medical Societies in London. He was President of the Medical Society in 1872, after serving as Lettsonian Lecturer in 1864; President of the Hunterian Society in 1873, of the Clinical Society in 1885, of the Harveian Society of London in 1890, and of the Royal Medico-Chirurgical Society in 1898. In 1890 he was elected a Member of the Société de Chirurgie de Paris. He married in 1862 Adelaide Louisa, daughter of Benjamin Waldrond, whom he survived three years, and by whom he had four sons and two daughters. He died on Dec. 31st, 1914, and was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery. Bryant was an excellent example of the best type of surgeon to a large London Hospital in the era immediately preceding the advent of Lister. He continued the tradition of Guy's which had been handed on from Sir Astley Cooper, Bransby Cooper, and Aston Key. He was a good operator but a better diagnostician, a fine teacher both at the bedside and in the lecture theatre, genial, but a little over-sanguine in his estimation of results. Honest in thought and in action, he taught his pupils to be equally so, and counselled them to keep free of any taint of commercialism. Like his great contemporary William Savory (q.v.), he was too old to appreciate the work of Lister, nor had he the preliminary scientific education to understand the basis upon which it was founded. He had for many years a large and lucrative practice, but his latter years were clouded by financial disasters, and he died a poor man. As a surgeon he is remembered by 'Bryant's ilio-femoral triangle', by his torsion forceps for arresting haemorrhage, and by his splint for the treatment of hip disease. He was amongst the pioneers in ovariotomy and colotomy. There is an oil painting of Bryant on the staircase leading to the Governors' Court Room, Guy's Hospital, three-quarter length sitting. There are also two portraits of him in the Council Album, and he appears in the portrait group of the Council painted by Jamyn Brooks in 1884 which has been engraved. The original hangs over the fireplace in the inner hall of the College. Bryant is the last standing figure up the dexter (left) side of the picture. PUBLICATIONS:- Bryant wrote an excellent text-book on Surgery - 1861- which was very largely used by students both in England and in the United States, and he published in 1889 a most satisfactory work on Diseases of the Breast, for it was nearly all the result of his own experience. The bibliography of the published writings of Thomas Bryant was compiled by J. H. E. Winston, Wills Librarian, Guy's Hospital. It appears in *Guy's Hosp. Gaz.*, 1893, Sept. 23rd, and in *Guy's Hosp. Rep.*, 1914, ixviii, 19.