railway, 44 m. N.W. of Delhi. Pop. (1901) 20,323. It is an important trade centre, with factories for ginning and pressing cotton, and a speciality in muslin turbans.
The district of Rohtak has an area of 1797 sq. m. It is situated in the midst of the level tableland between the Jumna and the Sutlej, forming one unbroken plain of hard clay copiously interspersed with light yellow sand, and covered in its wild state by a jungle of scrubby brushwood. The only natural reservoir for its drainage is the Najafgarh jhil, a marshy lake lying within the boundaries of Delhi. The Sahibi, a small stream from the Ajmere hills, traverses a corner of the district, and the northern portions are watered by the Rohtak and Butana branches of the Western Jumna canal; but the greater portion of the central plain, comprising about two-thirds of the district area, is entirely dependent upon the uncertain rainfall. The climate, though severe in point of heat, is generally healthy; the rainfall averages annually about 20 in.
The population in 1901 was 630,672, showing an increase of 6.8% in the decade. The principal crops are millets, wheat, barley, pulses, cotton and sugar-cane. The district is traversed by the line of the Southern Punjab railway from Delhi to Jind, and also touched by the Rewari-Ferozepore branch of the Rajputana railway. It is peculiarly exposed to drought, suffering in the famine of 1896-97, and yet more severely in 1899-1900, when the highest number of persons relieved was 33,632 in March 1900.
Rohtak was formerly included within the region known as Hariana. The district, with the other possessions of Sindhia west of the Jumna, passed to the British in 1803. Until 1832 Rohtak was under the administration of a political agent, resident at Delhi, but in that year it was brought under the general regulations and annexed to the North-Western Provinces. The outbreak of the Mutiny in 1857 led to its abandonment, when the mutineers attacked and plundered Rohtak, destroying every record of administration. It was not until after the fall of Delhi that the authority of the British government was permanently restored. Rohtak was then transferred to the Punjab.
ROJAS ZORRILLA, FRANCISCO DE (1607–c. 1660), Spanish dramatist, was born at Toledo; the only circumstance recorded of his life is that he became a knight of Santiago in 1644. The exact date of his death is unknown. His plays were published in 1640-45; the best of his dramatic compositions, Del Rey abajo Ninguno, is not included in the collection and was printed separately under the title of Garcia del Castañar. Of his other pieces, apart from their intrinsic merit, an international interest attaches to No hay padre siendo rey, which was borrowed by Rotrou for his Venceslas; to Donde hay agravios no hay zelos and the Amo criado, which were imitated by Scarron in his Jodelet Souffleté and Maître Valet; to Entre Bobos anda el juego, the source of Thomas Corneille's Don Bertrand de Cigarral, as well as of Scarron's Don Japhet d'Armenie; to Obligados y ofendidos, from which are derived Les Généreux Ennemis by Boisrobert, Les Illustres Ennemis by Thomas Corneille, and Scarron's Écolier de Salamanque; and to La traición busca el castigo, upon which are based Vanbrugh's False Friend and Le Sage's Traître puni. Rojas Zorrilla's power of conveying a tragic impression is manifest in Garcia del Castañar; his chief defect is his persistent preciosity of diction.
ROKITANSKY, CARL, Freiherr von (1804-1878), the founder of the Vienna school of pathological anatomy, was born on the 19th of February 1804 at Königgrätz in Bohemia. He studied medicine at Prague and at Vienna, graduating at the latter place in 1828. Soon afterwards he became assistant to Johann Wagner, the professor of pathological anatomy, and succeeded him in 1834 as prosector, being at the same time made extraordinary professor. It was not until ten years later (1844) that he reached the rank of full professor. To his duties as a teacher he added in 1847 the onerous office of medico-legal anatomist to the city, and from 1863 he filled an influential office in the ministry of education and public worship, wherein he had to advise on all routine matters of medical teaching, including patronage. A seat in the upper house of the Reichsrath rewarded his public labours in 1867, and on his retirement from all his offices in 1874 he was made a commander of the Order of Leopold. He joined the Imperial Academy of Sciences as a member in 1848, and became its president in 1869. He was president also of the medical society of the Austrian capital and an honorary member of many foreign societies. On his retirement at the age of seventy his colleagues celebrated the occasion by a function in the aula of the university, where his bust was unveiled. In his leave-taking speech he said that work had always been a pleasure to him and pleasures mostly a toil. His death in Vienna on the 23rd of July 1878 elicited many genuine expressions of affection and of esteem for his upright character. Two of his sons became professors at Vienna, one of astronomy and another of medicine, while a third gained distinction on the lyric stage.
With Rokitansky's name is associated the second great period of the medical school of Vienna, its first success having been identified with the liberal patronage of it by Maria Theresa and with the fame of Van Swieten, whom the empress had attracted thither from Leiden. The basis of its second reputation was morbid anatomy, together with the precision of clinical diagnosis dependent thereon, and associated with the labours of Rokitansky's lifelong friend, Joseph Skoda (1805-1881). The anatomical vogue had begun under Wagner while Rokitansky was still a student; but it reached its highest point while the latter was assistant in the dead-house and afterwards prosector and professor. The enthusiasm for the post-mortem study of disease brought one very serious consequence at the outset, in the enormous increase of the death-rate from puerperal fever in the lying-in wards of the general hospital. A comparison between the slight mortality in the wards that were afterwards reserved for the training of midwives and the excessive mortality in those set apart for the training of students proved that the cause was the conveyance of infection from the dead-house by the hands of the latter. The precautions introduced by I. P. Semmelweiss in 1847 proved adequate in removing that grave reproach from the study of morbid anatomy. Another and more lasting consequence of the assiduous pursuit of post-mortem study, counterbalancing somewhat the advantage of a more precise and localized diagnosis, was the loss of faith in the power of drugs to remedy the textural changes—the so-called “nihilism” of the Vienna school. The immediate outcome of Rokitansky's close application to the work of the dead-house was his Handbuch der pathologischen Anatomie (1842-46), in 3 vols., of which the first was published last. The value of the work lies in the second and third volumes, containing succinct descriptions of the visible changes and abnormalities in the several organs and parts of the body. Whenever Rokitansky touched the vital problems of general pathology, as he did in the postponed first volume, he revealed a metaphysical bent, which was strong in him behind all his undoubted powers of outward observation and accurate description. Being a few years too soon to profit by the microscopic movement which led to the cellular pathology, he endeavoured to reconcile the old humoral doctrine with his anatomical observations, and to read a new meaning into the doctrine of the various dyscrasias. In 1862 he entered into possession of a new pathological institute, in which he found means, for the first time, to display his extensive collection of specimens in a museum. Although he had no direct share in the newer developments of pathology, he was far from indifferent or reactionary towards them; indeed, the laboratories and chairs for microscopic and experimental pathology and for pathological chemistry were warmly encouraged and aided by him.
Next to his Handbuch, of which the Sydenham Society published an English translation in 4 vols. (1849-52), his most important writings were four memoirs in the Denkschriften of the Vienna Academy of Sciences (on the anatomy of goitre, cysts, diseases of arteries, and defects in the septa of the heart), the last as late as 1875. Other papers of less importance brought up the total of his writings to thirty-eight, including three addresses of a philosophical turn, on “Freedom of Inquiry” (1862), “The Independent Value of Knowledge” (1867) and “The Solidarity of Animal Life” (1869).
ROLAND [Roland de la Platière], JEAN MARIE (1734-1793), French statesman, was born at Thizy on the 18th of February 1734. He received a good education, and early formed the studious habits which remained with him through life. Proposing to seek his fortune abroad, he went on foot to Nantes, but was there prostrated by an illness so severe that all thoughts of emigration were perforce abandoned. For some years he was employed as a clerk; thereafter he joined a relative who was inspector of manufactures at Amiens, and he himself speedily rose to the position of inspector. To these two employments may be ascribed those qualities of assiduity and
