François-Joseph-Victor Broussais

François-Joseph-Victor Broussais was a French medical doctor, born at Saint-Malo in 1772 and dead in 1838. He received his first medical instruction from his father, a physician, served in a republican regiment and then as a navy surgeon, and studied in Paris under Xavier Bichat, whose link between physiology and pathology shows in his own theories. He graduated as a doctor in 1803, served with the army in Germany, the Netherlands and Spain, and from 1814 was assistant professor at the military hospital of the Val-de-Grace, where he set out his views on life and stimulus and on the physiological interdependence of the organs. In 1808 he published a history of chronic inflammations and later an examination of the generally adopted medical doctrine. In 1831 he became professor of general pathology in the academy of medicine, and late in life he drew large audiences with lectures on phrenology.