Born in London in 1841, the son of E J Brietzcke, formerly of the Admiralty. He entered as a student at Guy’s Hospital in October, 1860. A severe attack of rheumatism towards the end of his time at the hospital, followed by cardiac trouble, caused him to become Surgeon to one of the Hudson’s Bay Company’s ships. Sailing on June 11th, 1864, the vessel was wrecked near its destination. Brietzcke endured many privations and went through considerable perils, but returned to England with improved health, though during the remainder of his life he remained somewhat of an invalid. He joined the Naval Medical Service, and was on the West Coast of Africa for one year. He then became House Surgeon to the Sheffield Public Hospital and Dispensary, retained this post for three years, and finally entered upon general practice in Derby in 1869. From this, poor health and partnership troubles compelled his retirement in 1871. After a time he obtained the appointment of Medical Officer to the Fulham Convict Prison, and in 1872 was transferred to the post of Assistant Surgeon to the Parkhurst Prison, Isle of Wight. Thence he was moved successively to Portland, Portsea, and Millbank, being appointed Senior Medical Officer to Portsea in October, 1876. He married in 1874, and when he died at Portsea he left a widow and two young children. He was buried on March 11th, the prison officials attending the funeral. Despite his wretched health Brietzcke was a hard worker and a keen reformer. It was chiefly as an indefatigable officer of the medical convict service that he was best and most widely known and appreciated. Being of a warm, generous, sympathetic temperament, thoroughly unselfish, hating and fighting abuses of all kinds, gifted with far more than ordinary talent for appreciating the humorous in all matters, his company and correspondence were highly prized by his friends. Amongst the many abuses against which he vehemently protested was that which made the medical officers in the convict service hold an inferior position, both in regard to the large amount of work expected of them and the inadequacy of their pay, when contrasted with the more favoured position occupied by other officers of the service having unskilled work to perform. Brietzcke himself once wrote to a friend: “My great difficulty appears to be how to detect the malingerer. I have always found it difficult enough to make a correct diagnosis in any disease when the symptoms are at all obscure, but it seems ten times more so when you know that nearly every assertion your patient makes is false. And most of these men employ their solitary hours (which are not a few) in endeavouring to discover means for deceiving the doctor.” Publications: “Caries of First Lumbar Vertebra; Inflammation of the Membranes of the Cord extending to the Brain; Death by Coma.” – *Lancet*, 1872, ii, 668. “A Case of Aneurysm of the Arch of the Aorta, in which Death occurred from Rupture into the Pericardium.” – *Ibid.*, 1875, ii, 730. Extensive researches on urea in relation to muscular force were embodied by him in a paper in the *Brit. and For. Med.-Chir. Rev.*, 1877, lx, 190.