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Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/277

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M. PAUL BROCA.
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volution of the left frontal lobe. Other facts came in to confirm his view, and this part of the organ, now generally known as the "convolution of Broca," has been determined to be the center of the faculty of speech.

In the two manuals which Broca published as guides to the studies of general anthropology and craniology, he condensed in a few pages the work of several years. He insisted especially on the importance of accurate measurements, and of having conclusions supported by the averages of a large number of experimental cases. For these purposes he invented more than thirty simple, accurate, and convenient instruments of measurement. His anthropological memoirs are numerous, and pertain to all branches of the science, prehistorical, historical, ethnographical, and linguistic, and repeatedly illustrate the activity and encyclopedic comprehension of his intellect. He had begun to collect them in a series of volumes, of which three have been published and a fourth is in preparation. During the later years of his life he was chiefly interested in cerebral morphology; and he was engaged, when he was surprised by death, in a complete work on the morphology of the brain, to constitute a masterly summary of the result of his studies. Though it is unfinished, this valuable manuscript will not be lost to science. Its scattered leaves have been collected, and will be eventually published.

Broca intermitted his anthropological labors during the Franco-German War, in order to serve his country as one of the three directors of Public Assistance. Here it was his privilege, by the exercise of considerable prudence and tact, to save the funds of the department, amounting to 75,000,000 francs (or $115,000,000), from plunder by the Communists. While others were ready to boast of their services, and claim recognition for them after order was restored, Broca made no allusion to what he had done. He resumed his studies during the second siege, occupying himself in the formation of the collection of cerebral models in the laboratory. He founded the "Revue d'AnthropologiE" in January, 1872, and in the same year took part in the formation of the French Association for the Advancement of the Sciences, in which he became the leading spirit in the Anthropological Section.

The foundation of the Anthropological School, and its installation in rooms dependent on the Faculty of Medicine, was due to Broca's personal influence and zeal. The period of preparation for the opening of the institution was fraught with perils to it arising from the opposition of the clerical party and the timidity of the Government. The school, the laboratory, and the Anthropological Society, meeting in the same place, are now together known as the Anthropological Institute.

At the beginning of 1880 M. Broca was elected Senator for life. Shortly afterward he wrote in reply to the congratulations of an English club over his new advancement: "In choosing their candidate for