Paul Broca

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.