124 SATUKUAY LIX'TURES. 



School, intending to make physical sciences the Ijasis of his 

 future work, but his father, loth to see his own practice lost 

 to the family, persuaded his son to adopt medicine as his 

 profession. An additional motive for his compliance was 

 the recent death of his only sister, a very lovely girl of great 

 promise, whose loss made the parental home very lonel5'. 

 Broca did not trouble himself about his career ; he used to 

 say, in after life, that in any occupation, he could have 

 made such a place as his abilities merited ; and with his 

 healthy organization and unparalleled capacity for work, it 

 is probable that he was right. 



He went to Paris, and entered liis name at the Faculty of 

 Medicine, and thus began a career unequalled for the rapidity 

 of its progress. In 1S43, he became an extern e at the 

 hospitals, and in 1844, he became an interne. He was then 

 twenty years of age, a period at which most students of 

 medicine have only entered themselves. In 1848, he became 

 prosector of anatomy, and obtained the silver medal of tlio 

 Public Assistance. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine in 

 1849 ; the Academy of Medicine decreed him the Portal 

 prize in 1850, and, in 1853, he was i\amed Assistant Prof- 

 fessor of the Faculty of Medicine, and Surgeon of the 

 Central Bureau, being then only twenty-nine years old. 



In 1847, he was elected a member of the Anatomical 

 Societ}' of Paris, and for many years he was the most active 

 of the distinguished young men who raised thnt society to 

 its present pre-eminence. His researches into the histology 

 of cartilage and bone, with the aid of the microscope, of 

 the use of which in anatomical researches he was one of 

 the strongest advocates, have remained unsurpassed of their 

 kind to the present day. 



In the Society of Surgery he was equally active, and its 

 transactions bear witness to his zealous labors. 



It is not within the scope of this lecture to describe his 

 surgical or physiological work ; the general result, in the 

 number of his productions, will be given at the close. It 

 must be said, however, that his brilliant investigations into 

 the localities of the functions of the brain led the way to 



