Broussais, FRANCOIS JOSEPH VICTOR

Broussais, FRANCOIS JOSEPH VICTOR, the founder of a theory of medicine, was born at St Malo, 1772, and served as a surgeon in the navy and army. In 1820 he was appointed professor at the military hospital of Val-de-Grace. In 1830 he became professor of General Pathology in the Academy of Medicine in Paris, and afterwards was made a member of the Institute. He died at Vitry in 1838. His peculiar views are fully explained in his chief work—the Examen de la Doctrine Médicale Généralement Adoptée (1816), which asserts the following principles: that life is sustained only by excitation or irritation; that this excitation may be either too strong (surexcitation) or too weak (adynamie). These abnormal conditions at first manifest themselves in a specific organ of the body, but afterwards, by sympathy, are extended to other organs, as in fever—i.e. all diseases are originally local, and become general only by sympathy of the several organs. His theory and practice, which strongly resemble the Brunonian system of John Brown (q.v.), gained many adherents in France, who took the name of the 'Physiological School.'