Paul Broca Founder of French Anthropology, Explorer of the Brain

by Schiller, Francis

• ISBN13: 9780195074963
• ISBN10: 0195074963
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1992-08-13
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This elegant and comprehensive scientific biography recounts the life of Paul Broca, one of the world's most inventive and prolific scientists, whose work touched not only the fields of surgery, neuroanatomy, neurophysiology, and the neuropathology of speech, but statistics, hypnosis, blood transfusion, and the grounding of the French school of anthropology, as well. Although Broca is known primarily for providing the working basis for all future cerebral localization (he was the first to identify "Broca's area" --a small patch on the convoluted surface of the brain--as the central organ for speech), this portrait of Broca also describes his fundamental role in the establishment of modern scientific "laboratory" medicine, and his broad capacity and appetite for science as a whole. His enduring curiosity and insistent pursuit of truth led him through an exciting course of study, which often placed him philosophically in the position of utilizing doubt as his strongest investigative impetus. The author, Francis Schiller, --himself a neurologist-- underscores Broca's vast contributions to both practical and moral science with keen insights and scholarly acumen. Historians of science, neuroscientists, and general readers alike will enjoy this enlightening and important biography.

Table of Contents

Sainte-Foy-la-Grande

Carabin

Upheaval One

Upheaval Two

Cancer

Trifles and Tribulations

Rickets to Rotifers

Founding, Fathering, Feuding

The Human Group

A Manner of Not Speaking

Portraits and Projects

The Flaws of Evolution

Group Inhumanity

Around the Great Limbic Lobe of the Mammals

""Irremovable""

Epilogue: The Statue

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