M. PAUL BROCA. 261 



M. PAUL BROCA. 



M BROCA, says his friend Jacques Bertillon, worked all his 

 o life, and at tasks of very different sorts. " Rarely has there 

 been a mind so active, so equally open to all kinds of knowledge, and 

 so equally fond of all kinds. M. Elisee Reclus, who was his associate 

 in college, tells that he said to him very early in life: ' I do not believe 

 in vocations ; a man may select a career almost at random, he will 

 always make a place for himself in it according to his cut.' M. Broca 

 judged others according to himself, and in that went too far, but, as 

 concerned himself, he judged aright." M. Verneuil, pronouncing a 

 funeral eulogy upon him before the Faculty of Medicine, remarked 

 that his life might be shown up as a model to those who desired to 

 become in that profession first pupils, then assistants, and at last 

 masters. In whatever station he was placed, the eulogist added, M. 

 Broca always fulfilled his commission with exemplary exactness and 

 zeal, and, rather than think of avoiding the most trifling item in his 

 programme, he was inclined to charge himself unnecessarily in the fear 

 that he might not be carrying a load proportioned to his strength. 



Paul Broca was born at Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, in the Gironde, 

 June 28, 182-4. The Brocas were of an old Huguenot family, which 

 had included several of the famous brave " pastors of the desert," who 

 suffered in the times of persecution. Broca's father had served in the 

 Spanish wars, and had contracted a profound hatred of the spirit of 

 despotism in which they originated, and were waged ; and young 

 Broca was vividly impressed with the reality of the principles of civil 

 and religious liberty, at six years of age, when the Catholics of Sainte- 

 Foy rose against the Government of July, 1830. In 1832 he entered 

 the Communal College of Sainte-Foy, an institution which was then 

 frequented by all the Protestant youth of France, and at which most 

 of the distinguished men of the Reformed Churches were educated. 

 Broca's father wished him to study medicine. He, having a taste for 

 mathematics, preferred the Polytechnic School. He secretly prepared 

 a baccalaureate in science, and having taken the degree of Bachelor 

 in Letters, first in rank, in 1840, when only sixteen years old, he gained 

 permission from his father to be examined for the bachelor's degree 

 in mathematical sciences. Having gained this, he began to prepare 

 himself for the Polytechnic, teaching in the day-time in the college 

 where he had been a student, studying the calculus at night. His 

 plans were suddenly changed by the death of his sister. He was now 

 an only child, and would not embrace a profession that would call him 

 away from his parents. He resolved to study medicine, and share his 

 father's practice at Sainte-Foy. 



He was enrolled in the Faculty of Medicine at Paris in November, 



