Flourens, MARIE JEAN PIERRE

Flourens, MARIE JEAN PIERRE, a French experimental physiologist, was born on 15th April 1794, at Maureilhan, Hérault. After having obtained his degree of doctor of medicine at Montpellier at the early age of nineteen, he proceeded to Paris, where he soon became acquainted with the Cuviers, Geoffroy St-Hilaire, Destutt de Tracy, Chaptal, &c. He first attracted attention by a series of works dealing with the nervous system in its relations to the different sensations, wherein he sought to determine upon experimental grounds the specific sensational functions of the cerebrum, cerebrum, and corpora quadrigemina. After lecturing for Cuvier in 1828 and 1830, he received a professorship in the museum of the Jardin du Roi, and in 1855 at the Collège de France. In 1833 he was nominated perpetual secretary of the Academy of Sciences, and in 1840 he succeeded Michaud in the Academy. He also took some interest in politics; he was elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1838, and was made a peer of France in 1846. He died at Montgeron near Paris, 6th December 1867. Florens also wrote instructive books on the development and nutrition of the bones, on the skin and mucous membranes, on the longevity of man, on animal instinct and intelligence, on the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, Buffon, Cuvier, Geoffroy St-Hilaire, and Darwin, and a series of useful Éloges Historiques (3 vols. 1856-62).—His son, GUSTAVE, born at Paris, 4th August 1838, first distinguished himself by his book, Science de l'Homme (1865), a series of lectures on the origin of the human race, delivered at the Collège de France in 1863. Of ardent republican sympathies, he took a very active part in the Cretan insurrection against the Turks in 1866, and subsequently in the Commune at Paris, fighting in behalf of which he met his death on 3d April 1871.