Page:EB1911 - Volume 11.djvu/430

 resorted to by the public, and excited considerable controversy in the scientific world. He had almost reached the zenith of his fame when, in 1807, he repaired to Paris and established himself there as a medical practitioner, at the same time continuing his activity as a lecturer and writer. In 1808 appeared his Introduction au cours de physiologie du cerveau, which was followed in 1809 by the Recherches sur le système nerveux en général, et sur celui du cerveau en particulier (originally laid before the Institute of France in March 1808), and in 1810 by the first instalment of the Anatomie et physiologie du système nerveux en général, et du cerveau en particulier, avec des observations sur la possibilité de reconnaître plusieurs dispositions intellectuelles et morales de l’homme et des animaux par la configuration de leurs têtes. The Recherches and the first two volumes of the Anatomie bear the conjoint names of Gall and Spurzheim. The latter work was completed in 1819, and appeared in a second edition of six volumes in 1822–1825. In 1811 he replied to a charge of Spinozism or atheism, which had been strongly urged against him, by a treatise entitled Des dispositions innées de l’âme et de l’esprit, which he afterwards incorporated with his greater work. In 1819 he became a naturalized French subject, but his efforts two years afterwards to obtain admission to the Academy of Sciences, although supported by E. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, were unsuccessful. In 1823 he visited London with the intention of giving a series of phrenological lectures, but his reception was not what he had anticipated, and he speedily abandoned his plans. He continued to lecture and practise in Paris until the beginning of 1828, when he was disabled by an apoplectic seizure. His death took place at Montrouge near Paris, on the 22nd of August 1828.

GALL (a word common to many Teutonic languages, cf. Dutch gal, and Ger. Galle; the Indo-European root appears in Gr.  and Lat. fel; possibly connected with “yellow,” with reference to the colour of bile), the secretion of the liver known as “bile,” the term being also used of the pear-shaped diverticulum of the bile-duct, which forms a reservoir for the bile, more generally known as the “gall-bladder” (see ). From the extreme bitterness of the secretion, “gall,” like the Lat. fel, is used for anything extremely bitter, whether actually or metaphorically. From the idea that the gall-bladder was the dominating organ of a bitter, sharp temperament, “gall” was formerly used in English for such a spirit, and also for one very ready to resent injuries. It thus survives in American slang, with the meaning “impudence” or “assurance.”

“Gall,” meaning a sore or painful swelling, especially on a horse, may be the same word, derived from an early use of the word as meaning “poison.” On the other hand, in Romanic languages, the Fr. galle, Sp. agalla, a wind-gall or puffy distension of the synovial bursa on the fetlock joint of a horse, is derived from the Lat. galla, oak-apple, from which comes the English “gall,” meaning an excrescence on trees caused by certain insects. (See .)

GALLABAT, or, called by the Abyssinians Matemma (Metemma), a town of the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, in  It is built, at the foot of a steep slope, on the left bank of a tributary of the Atbara called the Khor Abnaheir, which forms here the Sudan-Abyssinian frontier. Gallabat lies 90 m. W. by N. of Gondar, the capital of Amhara, and being on the main route from Sennar to Abyssinia, is a trade centre of some importance. Pop. about 3000. The majority of the buildings are grass tukls. Slaves, beeswax, coffee, cotton and hides were formerly the chief articles of commerce. The slave market was closed about 1874. Being on the frontier line, the possession of the town was for long a matter of dispute between the Sudanese, and later the Egyptians, on the one hand and the Abyssinians on the other. About 1870 the Egyptians garrisoned the town, which in 1886 was attacked by the dervishes and sacked. From Gallabat a dervish raiding party penetrated to Gondar, which they looted. In revenge an Abyssinian army under King John attacked the dervishes close to Gallabat in March 1889. The dervishes suffered very severely, but King John being killed by a stray bullet, the Abyssinians retired (see : Military Operations, 1885–1896). In December 1898 an Anglo-Egyptian force entered Gallabat. The Abyssinians then held the fort, but as the result of frontier arrangement the town was definitely included in the Sudan, though Abyssinia takes half the customs revenue. Since 1899 the trade of the place has revived, coffee and live stock being the most important items.

The town and district form a small ethnographical island, having been peopled in the 18th century by a colony of Takruri from Darfur, who, finding the spot a convenient resting-place for their fellow-pilgrims on their way to Mecca and back, obtained permission from the negus of Abyssinia to make a permanent settlement. They are an industrious agricultural race, and cultivate cotton with considerable success. They also collect honey in large quantities. The Takruri possess jagged throwing knives, which are said to have been brought from their original home in the Upper Congo regions.

GALLAIT, LOUIS (1810–1887), Belgian painter, was born at Tournay, in Hainaut, Belgium, on the 9th of May 1810. He first studied in his native town under Hennequin. In 1832 his first picture, “Tribute to Caesar,” won a prize at the exhibition at Ghent. He then went to Antwerp to prosecute his studies under Mathieu Ignace Van Brée, and in the following year exhibited at the Brussels Salon “Christ Healing the Blind.” This picture was purchased by subscription and placed in the cathedral at Tournay. Gallait next went to Paris, whence he sent to the Belgian Salons “Job on the Dunghill,” “Montaigne Visiting Tasso in Prison”; and, in 1841, “The Abdication of Charles V.,” in the Brussels Gallery. This was hailed as a triumph, and gained for the painter a European reputation. Official invitations then caused him to settle at Brussels, where he died on the 20th of November 1887. Among his greater works may be named: “The Last Honours paid to Counts Egmont and Horn by the Corporations of the Town of Brussels,” now at Tournay; “The Death of Egmont,” in the Berlin gallery; the “Coronation of Baudouin, Emperor of Constantinople,” painted for Versailles; “The Temptation of St Anthony,” in the palace at Brussels; “The Siege of Antioch,” “Art and Liberty,” a “Portrait of M. B. Dumortier” and “The Plague at Tournay,” all in the Brussels gallery. “A Gipsy Woman and her Children” was painted in 1852. “M. Gallait has all the gifts that may be acquired by work, taste, judgment and determination,” wrote Théophile Gautier; his art is that of a man of tact, a skilled painter, happy in his dramatic treatment but superficial. No doubt, this Walloon artist, following the example of the Flemings of the Renaissance and the treatment of Belgian classical painters and the French Romantic school, sincerely aimed at truth; unfortunately, misled by contemporary taste, he could not conceive of it excepting as dressed in sentimentality. As an artist employed by the State he exercised considerable influence, and for a long period he was the leader of public taste in Brussels.

See Teichlin, Louis Gallait und die Malerei in Deutschland (1853); J. Dujardin, L’Art flamand (1899); C. Lemonnier, Histoire des beaux-arts en Belgique (1881).

GALLAND, ANTOINE (1646–1715), French Orientalist and archaeologist, the first European translator of the Arabian Nights, was born on the 4th of April 1646 at Rollot, in the department of Somme. The completion of his school education at Noyon was followed by a brief apprenticeship to a trade, from which, however, he soon escaped, to pursue his linguistic studies at Paris. After having been employed for some time in making a catalogue of the Oriental manuscripts at the Sorbonne, he was, in 1670, attached to the French embassy at Constantinople; and in 1673 he travelled in Syria and the Levant, where he copied a great number of inscriptions, and sketched, and in some cases removed historical monuments. After a brief visit to France, where his collection of ancient coins attracted some attention, Galland returned to the Levant in 1676; and in 1679 he undertook a third voyage, being commissioned by the French East India Company to collect for the cabinet of Colbert; on the expiration of this commission he was instructed by the government to continue his researches, and had the title of