Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 1267

FRANçOIS JOSEPH VICTOR BROUSSAIS (1772-1838) De l'irritation et de la folie. Librairie Polymathique 1828 56, xix, 431 pp., front. (port.). 20.2 cm.

For more information on this author or work, see number: 1265

. . . Although his follower, Bouillaud, was moved to let even greater torrents of blood, students had already begun to edge away from the elder vampire, whose extravagances were finally exploded by the good sense and temperate judgment of the clinician, Chomel, the statistical inductions of his pupil Louis and the sarcasms of Laennec, who slyly likened Broussais to Paracelsus (Fielding H. Garrison, An introduction to the history of medicine. 4th ed. Philadelphia, 1929. p. 410). Thus discredited, Broussais turned his attention to the field of mental illness. This treatise on irritation and insanity was written after he became president of the Society for Phrenology and is one of his last and lesser works.

Cited references: Waller 1495; Wellcome II, p. 248