Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/648

Rh 624 R O H R O L are food grains, pulses, cotton, and sugar-cane. There are no manufactures of more than local importance excepting ornamental turbans at Rohtak and saddlery at Kalanar. Pretty pottery is made at Jhajjar, and cotton cloth for home use is woven in large quan- tities. The gross revenue of the district in 1883-84 was 78,346, of which 65,440 was derived from the land-tax. Rohtak was formerly included within the region known as Hariana, which in 1718 was granted by the emperor Faroksher to his minister Rukhan - ad - Daula, who in his turn made over the greater part of it to a Baluch noble, Faujdar Khan, afterwards created nawab of Farakhnagar. The district, together with the other possessions of Scindia west of the Jumna, passed to the East India Company in 1803. Until 1832 Rohtak was under the ad- ministration of a political agent, resident at Delhi, but in that year it was brought under the general regulations and annexed to the North-Western Provinces. The outbreak of the mutiny in 1857 led to the abandonment, for a time, of the district by the British, when the mutineers attacked and plundered the civil station of Rohtak, destroying every record of administration. It was not until after the fall of Delhi that the authority of the British Government was permanently restored. The constitution of the present district was then taken in hand, and Rohtak was trans- ferred to the Punjab Government. ROHTAK, municipal town and headquarters of the above district, lying in 28 54' N. lat and 76 38' E. long., with a population in 1881 of 15,699 (males 8155, females 7544). It is situated 44 miles to the north-west of Delhi on the road to Hissar, and, viewed from the sandhills to the south, forms with its white mosque in the centre and the fort standing out boldly to the east a striking and picturesque object. Rohtak is a town of great antiquity, but beyond the fact that it became the headquarters of a British district in 1824 it is of no considerable importance. ROJAS-ZORILLA, FRANCISCO DE, Spanish dramatist, a contemporary of Lope de Vega and Calderon, was born about the beginning of the 17th century. Of his personal history hardly anything has been recorded, but we know that he lived at Madrid, and about the year 1641 he seems to have become a knight of Santiago. Of his dramatic compositions some thirty still survive, which can be read in the 54th volume of the Biblioteca de Autores Espanoles (1861) ; the best by general consent is held to be that entitled Del Rey abajo Ninguno, otherwise known by the name of its hero as Garcia de Castanar. Of the others, apart from their intrinsic merit, a double literary in- terest attaches to the No hay Padre siendo Rey, which was borrowed by Rotrou for his Venceslas, to the Donde hay Agravios no hay Zelos and the A mo criado, which were imitated by Scarron in his Jodelet Soufflete and Maltre Valet, and to the Entre Bobos anda el Juego, to which Thomas Corneille has acknowledged his obligations for his Bertrand de Cigarral. The Garcia de Castanar, Donde hay Agravios, and Entre Bobos anda el Juego are given by Ochoa in his Tesoro del Teatro Espanol. ROKITANSKY, CAKL VON ROKITANSKY, FREIHERR VON (1804-1878), the founder of the Vienna school of pathological anatomy, was born in 1804 at Koniggratz in Bohemia. He got his schooling in his native town as well as at the gymnasium of Leitmeritz, after which he became a student of medicine at Prague. He finished his medical studies at Vienna, graduating there in 1828. Soon after he became assistant to Wagner, the professor of patho- logical anatomy, and succeeded him in 1834 as prosector, being at the same time made extraordinary professor. It was not until ten years later (1844) that he reached the rank of full professor. To his duties as a teacher he added in 1847 the onerous office of medico-legal anatomist to the city, and in 1863 an influential office in the ministry of education and public worship, wherein he had to advise on all routine matters of medical teaching, including patron- age. A seat in the upper house of the reichsrath rewarded his public labours in 1867, and on his retirement from all his offices in 1874 he was made a commander of the Order of Leopold. He joined the Imperial Academy of Sciences as a member in 1 848, and became its president in 1869. He was president also of the medical society of the Austrian capital and an honorary member of many foreign societies. On his retirement at the age of seventy his colleagues celebrated the occasion by a function in the aula of the university, where his bust was unveiled. In his leave-taking speech he said that work had always been a pleasure to him and pleasures mostly a toil. His death in 1878 elicited many genuine expressions of affection and of esteem for his upright character. Two of his sons be- came professors at Vienna, one of astronomy and another of medicine, while a third gained distinction on the lyric stage. With Rokitansky's name is associated the second great period of the medical school of Vienna, its first success having been identified with the liberal patronage of it by Maria Theresa and with the fame of Van Swieten, whom the empress had attracted thither from Leyden. The basis of its second reputation was morbid anatomy, together with the precision of clinical diagnosis dependent thereon, and associated with the labours of Rokitansky's lifelong friend Skoda. The anatomical vogue had begun under Wagner while Rokitansky was still a student ; but it reached its highest point while the latter was assistant in the dead-house and afterwards prosector and professor. The enthusiasm for the post-mortem study of disease brought one very serious consequence at the outset, in the enormous increase of the death-rate from puerperal fever in the lying- in wards of the general hospital. A comparison between the slight mortality in the wards that were afterwards reserved for the train- ing of midwives and the excessive mortality in those set apart for the training of students proved that the cause was the conveyance of cadaveric poison from the dead-house by the hands of the latter. The precautions introduced after 1847 succeeded in removing that grave reproach from the study of morbid anatomy. Another and more lasting consequence of the assiduous pursuit of post-mortem study, counterbalancing somewhat the advantage of a more precise and localized diagnosis, was the loss of faith in the power of drugs to remedy the textural changes the so-called "nihilism" of the Vienna school. The immediate outcome of Rokitansky's close application to the work of the dead-house was his Handbuch der pathologischen Anatomic (1842-46), in 3 vols., of which the first was published last. The value of the work lies in the second and third volumes, containing succinct descriptions of the visible changes and abnormalities in the several organs and parts of the body. Whenever Rokitansky touched the vital problems of general pathology, as he did in the postponed first volume, he revealed a metaphysical bent, which was strong in him behind all his un- doubted powers of outward observation and accurate description. Being a few years too soon to profit by the microscopic movement which led to the cellular pathology, he endeavoured to reconcile the old humoral doctrine with his anatomical observations, and to read a new meaning into the doctrine of the various dyscrasias. The third and last edition of his Handbuch was published from 1855 to 1861. In 1862 he entered into possession of a new patho- logical institute, in which he found means, for the first time, to dis- play his extensive collection of specimens in a museum. Although he had no direct share in the newer developments of pathology, he was far from indifferent or reactionary towards them ; indeed the laboratories and chairs for microscopic and experimental pathology and for pathological chemistry were warmly encouraged and aided by him. Next to his Handbuch, of which the Syd. Soc. published an English trans- lation in 4 vols., 1849-52, his most important writings were four memoirs in the Denkschriften of the Vienna Academy of Sciences (on the Anatomy of Goitre, Cysts, Diseases of Arteries, and Defects in the Septa of the Heart), the last as late as 1875. Other papers of less importance brought up the total of his writings to thirty-eight, including three addresses of a philosophical turn, on " Freedom of Inquiry " (1862), " The Independent Value of Knowledge " (1867), and "The Solidarity of Animal Life" (1869). ROLAND. JEAN MARIE ROLAND DE LA PLATRIERE (1732-1793), who, along with his wife, MANON JEANNE PHLIPON (1754-1793), played a prominent part in the his- tory of the French Revolution, in connexion chiefly with the policy and fortunes of the Girondists, was born at Ville- franche near Lyons in 1732. He received a good educa- tion, and early formed the studious habits which remained with him through life. Proposing to seek his fortune abroad, he went on foot to Nantes, but was there pros- trated by an illness so severe that all thoughts of emigra- tion were perforce abandoned. For some years he was employed as a clerk ; thereafter he joined a relative who was inspector of manufactures at Amiens, and he himself speedily rose to the position of inspector. To these two