BROUSSAIS, FrançoisJoseph Victor, a celebrated French physician, was born at St Malo in 1772. From his father, who was also a physician, he received his first instructions in medicine, and he studied for some years at the college of Dinan. At the age of seventeen he entered one of the newly-formed republican regiments, but ill health compelled him to withdraw after about two years. He resumed his medical studies, and after passing some time in the hospitals of St Malo and Bryt, obtained an appointment as surgeon in the navy. In 1799 he proceeded to Paris, where in 1803 he graduated as M.D. In 1805 he again joined the army in a professional capacity, and served in Germany, Holland, Italy, and Spain. In 1814 he returned to Paris, and was appointed assistant-professor to the Military Hospital of the Val-de-Grace, where he first promulgated his peculiar doctrines. His theory, which strongly resembles that of John Brown, points to excitation or irritation as the fundamental fact in life. He found the principal cause of disease in over-irritation, which, primarily local, extends itself through sympathy to the other organs of the body, as in fever. His lectures were attended by great numbers of students, who received with the utmost enthusiasm the new theories which he propounded. In 1816 he published his Examen de la doctrine médicale généralement adoptée, which drew down upon its author the hatred of the whole medical faculty of Paris. By degrees his doctrines triumphed; and were adopted in the writings and practice of the best physicians, and even in the medical school itself, long before their propounder held office in that institution. In 1831 he was appointed professor of general pathology in the academy of medicine, and taught with great applause till his death in ...