Francois Joseph Victor Broussais, a French physician, born at St. Malo, Dec. 17,1772, died at Vitry, near Paris, Nov. 17, 1838. His early years were passed at a small village where his father was a physician. At the age of 12 he was sent to school at Dinan, where he was pursuing his studies when the revolution broke out in 1789. He was enrolled as a volunteer, and joined the army. After two years he obtained leave to return home, on account of sickness. On his recovery he became a student of medicine, and obtained a commission as surgeon on a ship of war. He held an appointment at Brest from 1795 to 1798; but being anxious to pursue a course of study at Paris, he removed there in 1799. He obtained an appointment as military surgeon in 1804, and two years later was sent to the camp at Boulogne; but the project of invading England being abandoned, the army was turned against Austria, and Broussais went with it in all its campaigns. In 1808 he obtained leave to go to Paris to superintend the publication of his Histoire ties phlegmasies chroniques.

This work, which contains the germs of all his future doctrines, met with little notice at the time; for, although Pinel praised it highly, and it was honorably noticed by the institute, nearly the whole edition remained unsold till 1816. Soon after this publication, in 1808, he was appointed chief physician to a division of the French army in Spain, where he remained six years, pursuing his researches and attending to the duties of his office. In 1814 he was appointed assistant professor at the military hospital of the Val de Grace in Paris. He commenced a course of lectures on practical medicine, in which he attempted to form a system and a school of his own, in opposition to the doctrines of Pinel, then taught in the established schools of medicine. His lectures were attended by great numbers of students, who accepted his ideas with enthusiasm. In 1816 he published his Examen de doctrine medicale generalement adoptee, etc, which excited the opposition of the whole medical faculty. By degrees his doctrines gained approval, and were taught in the medical school itself long before 1832, when Broussais was appointed professor of general pathology in the academy of medicine, which office he held until his death.

Besides the two worrks above mentioned, he published in 1824 his Traite de la physiologie appliquee d la pathologie; in 1829, his Commentaires des propositions de pathologie consignees dans Vexamen; in 1832, Le cholera morbus epidemique. - The life of Broussais presents three distinct periods. In the first, he labored to prove that the doctrines of Pinel with regard to the essentiality of fever were erroneous, and that some morbid agent, producing irritation and inflammation, was the cause of all disease. From 1816 to 1821 he was successfully occupied in controverting the established theories from this point of view. His followers then complained that he had shown the fallacy of Pinel's theory, but had not sufficiently elaborated a new doctrine to replace it. From 1821 to 1828 he labored to establish what he called the "physiological system of medicine," in opposition to the "on-tological" system of Pinel. The " History of Chronic Inflammations " had prepared the way for his theory of irritation in the organs, corresponding to a principle of irritability in the organism.

He therefore proclaimed this doctrine as the basis of all medical truth, and sustained his views with ability and general success from 1821 to 1828. It was the doctrine taught by Brown in Edinburgh more than 30 years before, and had already met with much success in England, Germany, and Italy, though little known in France until revived by Broussais under a new form. For seven years Broussais had immense success in France and Belgium, where this theory was practically new. In England and Germany it met with less success, because it had been known as the doctrine of Brown; and though very true in many points, it was nevertheless insufficient to explain all the phenomena of health and disease. The same opinion arose in France after a seven years' practical "trial of the system; and after being greatly lauded and admired, Brous-sais was deserted by the students and professors of medicine. The partial truth of his views was admitted, but other principles and doctrines were needed to explain the physiological and pathological phenomena of life. In nervous diseases it afforded no assistance, but left the student as much in the dark as he was before; and this was admitted by his own partisans, and partly by Broussais himself.

To make his system more complete, he undertook a series of observations on the nervous system, and its relation to psychology. Although he had been up to that time more or less opposed to phrenology, he turned his attention to the subject, gave public lectures on it, and in 1836 published an octavo volume under the title of Cours dephrenologie. This work had a temporary popularity, but failed to make an abiding impression. Broussais's theory was on the wane, as a partial view of truth, not containing a complete and unitary principle of science.