Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/247

 speech and thought. In an important memoir 'On the Cerebral Mechanism of Speech and Thought' (Trans. Ray. Med. Chir. Soc. 1872) he was the first authoritative propounder of the notion of an altogether separate centre for conception of ideation, which although subsequently adopted by Charcot and others has been rejected by Charlton Bastian and others. In a later paper (Brain, i. 1878) Broadbent developed his views and termed the centre for concepts the 'naming centre,' whilst a related higher motor centre was postulated as a 'propositionising centre' in which words other than nouns were supposed to be registered and where sentences were formulated preparatory to their utterance through the instrumentality of Broca's centre. Here, too, Broadbent located the more strictly mental faculties in those parts of the human cerebrum which differentiate it from that of the quadrumana and which are the latest to develop in man. This location was re-advanced with modifications but partly through a similar process of reasoning by Flechsig in 1895, and recent opinion somewhat hesitatingly supports Broadbent's views. At his death he was engaged on a treatise on aphasia. Other important papers concerned the scientific study of therapeutics. Of these the first was 'An Attempt to apply Chemical Principles in Explanation of the Action of Remedies and Poisons' (Proc. Roy. Soc. 1868; Brit. Med. Journ. ii.). Later themes were the remote effects of remedies (1886) and on 'The Relation of Pathology and Therapeutics to Clinical Medicine' (Brit. Med. Journ. 1887).

At the Royal College of Physicians, Broadbent, who had become a member in 1861 and a fellow in 1869, was examiner in 1876–7 and in 1883–4, a member of the council in 1885–6, censor in 1888–9, and senior censor in 1895. In 1887 he delivered the Croonian lectures 'On the Pulse,' which he made the subject of a book (1890), and in 1891 he gave the Lumleian lectures 'On Structural Diseases of the Heart from the Point of View of Prognosis.'

In 1874 he also delivered the Lettsomian lectures before the Medical Society of London 'On Syphilitic Affections of the Nervous System'; in 1884 the Harveian lectures before the Harveian Society on 'Prognosis in Valvular Disease'; and in 1894 the Cavendish lecture 'On some Points in the Treatment of Typhoid Fever,' before the West London Medico-Chirurgical Society. He was examiner in medicine to London (1883) and Cambridge (1888) Universities. In 1881 he served as a member of the royal commission on fever hospitals. On heart disease Broadbent became a leading authority. In conjunction with his elder son he published, in 1897, a valuable treatise on it which was founded on a large, acutely observed, clinical experience; the book reached a fourth edition in 1906. To typhoid fever he likewise devoted special attention, strongly deprecating the 'expectant' or 'do-nothing' treatment, and enforcing careful dieting and nursing and suitable hydro-therapeutic and other measures.

From 1872, when Broadbent removed to 34 Seymour Street, to 1892, when he went into a larger house at 84 Brook Street, his private consultant practice was expanding, chiefly among the upper classes of society, and it finally reached vast proportions. In 1891 his income from this source far exceeded 13,000l., and he refused twice as much work as he could undertake. His patients soon included the royal family. In 1891 he attended King George V when Duke of York, during an attack of typhoid fever, and in 1892 was in constant attendance on the Duke of Clarence during his fatal illness of acute pneumonia. In the same year (1892) he was appointed physician in ordinary to King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, and in 1896 physician extraordinary to Queen Victoria. On the death of the Queen he was appointed physician in ordinary to King Edward VII and to the Prince of Wales (King George V). He was created a baronet in 1893 and K.C.V.O. in 1901.

Broadbent played a prominent part in many public movements affecting the cure or prevention of disease. In 1898 he became chairman of the organising committee for promoting the National Association for the Prevention of Consumption, which was formally registered under the board of trade regulations in 1899 with King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, as president. The object of the association was to instruct the general public in the methods by which the spread of tuberculosis could best be prevented or arrested. He was chairman of the organising council of the British Congress on Tuberculosis which met in London in July 1901, when Prof. Koch of Berlin threw doubt on the intercommunicability of human and bovine tuberculosis, a view which a royal commission at once investigated and disputed. Broadbent was also chairman of the advisory committee of King Edward VII's Sanatorium at Midhurst and was consulting