122 SATURDAY LECTURES. 



known of his parentage, and of what it is now the fashion 

 to call his earl}^ environments. 



Broca's father, Dr. Benjamin Broca, was an army surgeon, 

 and had served throughout the memorable war in Spain 

 under the first Napoleon. The campaigns over, he returned 

 to his native town where he married and settled down to 

 practice his profession. He was a man of marked traits of 

 character ; of unflinching probity and courage, and charit- 

 able to an extreme. ' From him his son derived his taste for 

 the natural sciences as well as a grave irony which charac- 

 terized them both The son used to quote an ironical re- 

 mark of his father's which is amusing enough to be related. 

 The elder Broca flourished in the time when the doctrines 

 of Broussais attained such astonishing popularity, and 

 blood-letting and rigorous diet were the treatment in vogue. 

 Against these views. Dr. Broca fought valiantly, and it is 

 told of him that after a consultation over a patient prostra- 

 ted with typhoid fever, hearing the physician in charge 

 prescribe, as the only nutriment, a broth to be made of frog's 

 feet, Broca turned back from the doorway and said, " and 

 above all things, be sure to skim off the fat ! " 



Dr. Broca, senior, acquired a large country practice, but 

 which was not very lucrative, for his rule was to charge the 

 rich but little, while to the poor he gave his services and 

 paid for their medicines. When, in later years, after the 

 death of his wife, he removed to Paris to reside in the house 

 of his distinguished son, the whole country round was in 

 sorrow for his loss, and his indigent clientage presented him 

 with a silver-gilt cup inscribed " To the physician of the 

 poor." 



An amusing story is still told in Sainte-Foix of this 

 excellent man which exemplifies his unfeiling benevolence. 

 At a late hour, one cold and dark winter night, a peasant 

 requested him to visit a person taken seriously ill, in a 

 distant hamlet. The good doctor left his comfortable fire- 

 side without hesitation and accompanied the man along a 

 lonely pathway, inaccessible to all but pedestrians. Arriv- 

 ing, at length, at a small cluster of cottages, the man turned 



