Paul Broca

Biography

He is a child prodigy, simultaneously obtaining a baccalaureat in Littérature, mathematical and Physique. He enters at 17 years to the medical school and obtains his diploma at 20 years, at the age where its contemporaries begin just their studies of medicine.

Broca studies the Médecine with Paris. It becomes soon Professor of surgical Pathologie to the Université of Paris and a famous medical researcher in several fields. At 24 years, it is already covered with medals and rewards. Its first scientific work relates to the Histologie of the Cartilage and the Os, but he studies also the Cancer, the treatment of the Anévrisme and the Infant mortality. As neuro-anatomist, it takes part in the comprehension of the limbic Système and the Rhinencéphale.

But what ensures him its place in the history of medicine is its discovery of the “ center parole ” in the Brain (known maintaining like the Surface of Broca) located in the third Convolution of the frontal Lobe. He arrived to this discovery by studying the brains of patients aphasics (unable to speak), in particular that of its first patient at the Hospital of the the Kremlin-Bicêtre, Mr. Leborgne, called “Tan” because it was the only syllable which he managed to pronounce, and that he repeated. Broca shows that this one suffered from a neuro-syphilitic lesion of the frontal Lobe left. It in infère that this zone is strongly implied in the production of the Parole.

Broca is also a pioneer in Physical anthropology. It founds the anthropological Société of Paris in 1859, the Revue anthropology in 1872 and the École of anthropology of Paris in 1876. It advances the Anthropométrie craniale by developing new measuring instruments and new numerical indexes.

The use by racist ideologists of measurements and conclusions of Broca was largely discussed by Stephen Jay Gould in The Mismeasure off Man (1981).

Another field where Broca worked is the Comparative anatomy of the Primate S. It described for the first time of the Trépanation S going up with the Neolithic . It is very interested by the relations between the anatomy of the cranium and the brain and the capacities mental and the intelligence.

Lastly, Paul Broca was a pioneer of the functional cerebral Imagerie by inventing a " thermometric Crown " with which he thought of being able to measure the temperature variations of the surface of cranium due to changes of the activity of the brain. In a publication of 1861 for the Bulletin of the Academy of Medicine , he reports like when one makes carry out a task requiring of the concentration to a participant, one measures an increase in the temperature of cranium on the level of the frontal lobes. Because of practical difficulty and sensitivity of the method, the thermometric crown will be however abandoned.

It seems to have been remarkable. Its contemporaries describe it like “generous, sympathizing and nice”.

It founded in 1848 the Company of the free-thinkers, is favorable to the theory of the Natural selection of Darwin and is denounced with the authorities like subversive, materialist and corrupter of youth.

Baited worker, it wrote hundreds of books and articles, including 53 on the brain. He also sought to improve the health care of stripped by supporting the Public assistance. Among his students, one can quote Paul Topinard and Joseph Deniker.

At the end of his life, Paul Broca is elected Senator with life. He was also member of the Académie of medicine and accepted distinctions of several institutions in France and elsewhere.

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