Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/246

 with Nature,' edited by W. H. Chesson (1908), and fragments of an autobiography, with introduction and epilogue by her nephew, Edmund Gosse, entitled 'Eliza Brightwen: the Life and Thoughts of a Naturalist' (1909). She was an evangelical churchwoman and much concerned with philanthropy.

 BROADBENT, WILLIAM HENRY, first baronet (1835–1907), physician, born at Lindley on 23 Jan. 1835, was eldest son (in a family of five sons and two daughters) of John Broadbent (d. 1880) of Lindley, near Huddersfield, woollen manufacturer and a prominent Wesleyan, who married Esther (d. 1879), daughter of Benjamin Butterworth of Holmforth. Col. John Edward Broadbent, R.E., C.B. (b. 1848), is his younger brother. Brought up as a Wesleyan, William joined the Church of England in 1860. After early education at a day school at Longwood, near Lindley, and at Huddersfield College, William left school at fifteen for his father's factory, where he spent two years in learning the processes of manufacture. Resolving on a medical career, he, in 1852, when seventeen, was apprenticed to a surgeon in Manchester and entered the Owens College, then in Quay Street. At the Owens College and at the Manchester Royal School of Medicine (Pine Street) he gained medals in chemistry, botany, materia medica, anatomy, physiology, midwifery, surgery, and operative surgery. In 1856 he carried off the gold medals in anatomy, physiology, and chemistry at the first M.B. London examination. Next year he became a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries, London. After failing in an application for the post of house surgeon at the Manchester Royal Infirmary he went, in 1857, to Paris, where he studied under Trousseau, Ricord, Reyer, and other eminent masters in medicine. Living with a French family, he acquired a first-rate knowledge of the French language and an excellent accent. Returning to England in 1858, he passed the final M.B. (London) examination, taking the gold medal in obstetric medicine and first-class honours in medicine. Soon afterwards he obtained the post of obstetric officer at St. Mary's Hospital, London, and became resident medical officer in 1859. In 1860 he was appointed pathologist and lecturer on physiology and zoology in the medical school of St. Mary's Hospital, and curator of the museum. The same year he proceeded to the degree of M.D. (London). He was physician to the London Fever Hospital from 1860 until 1879, when he became consulting physician. In 1861 he was appointed lecturer in comparative anatomy in St. Mary's Hospital medical school, and in 1863 physician to the Western General Dispensary. But despite his many offices, Broadbent's practice was not lucrative. Residing at 23 Upper Seymour Street, he could only meet his household expenses by coaching and by taking resident students. With hesitation he refused an offer of a professorship of anatomy and physiology at Melbourne University at 1000l. a year.

With St. Mary's Hospital his association lasted long. In 1865 he was elected physician to the out-patients and in 1871 was promoted to the charge of the in-patients, with a lectureship in medicine, which he held for seventeen years. He remained on the active staff of St. Mary's until 1896, his retirement being deferred for five years by special resolution. He then became honorary consulting physician. Broadbent proved one of the finest clinical teachers of the London schools, especially at the bedside.

Meanwhile his practice and his reputation, both as an investigator of medical problems and as an expert on the treatment of specific diseases, steadily grew. In 1866 he published a book 'On Cancer,' describing his treatment of some cases by the injection of acetic acid into the tumour, but although some good results were at first obtained, later experience was unsatisfactory, and Broadbent discontinued the treatment. An early paper on 'Sensori-motor Ganglia and Association of Nerve Nuclei' (Brit. and Foreign Med. Clin. Review, April 1866) also attracted attention. There he explained the immunity from paralysis of bilaterally associated muscles in hemiplegia, and advanced the theory which is generally known as 'Broadbent's hypothesis' to explain the unequal distribution of paralysis in face, trunk, arm and leg, in the ordinary form of hemiplegia. The essential principle has not been invalidated in the forty years since it was originally promulgated, and it is widely applicable to neurological questions, and to the solution of problems in physiology, pathology, and psychology.

Broadbent also did valuable work on aphasia, both in reporting important cases and in suggesting explanations of the working of the cerebral mechanism of 