Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 4.djvu/431

Rh Broussa, the Prusa of the classical writers, founded, it is said, at the suggestion of Hannibal, was for a long time the seat of the Itithynian kings. It continued to iiourish under the Uoman and Byzantine emperors till the 10th century, when it was captured and destroyed by Seif-ed-daulet of Aleppo. Restored by the Byzantines, it was again taken in 1327 by the Ottomans after a siege of ten years, and continued to be their capital till Amurath I. removed to Adria- nople. In 1402 it was pillaged by the Tatars ; in 1413 it resisted an attack of the Karamanians ; in 1512 it fell into the power of Ala Eddiu ; and in 1607 it was burnt by the rebellious Kalenderogli. In 1833 it was seized by Ibrahim Taslia, and from 1852-55 afforded an asylum to Abd-el-Kader. In modern times it has suffered several times from earthquake and conflagration, especially in 1855.  BROUSSAIS,, a celebrated French physician, was born at St Malo in 1772. From his father, who was also a physician, lie received his first instructions in medicine, and he studied for some years at the college of Dinan. At the age of seventeen he entered one of the newly-formed republican regiments, but ill health compelled him to withdraw after about two years. lie resumed his medical studies, and after passing some time in the hospitals of St Malo and Bryt, obtained an appointment as surgeon in the navy. In 1799 he proceeded to Paris, where in 1803 he graduated as M.D. In 1805 lie again joined the army in a professional capacity, and served in Germany, Holland, Italy, and Spain. In 1814 he returned to Paris, and was appointed assistant-professor to the Military Hospital of the Val-de-Grace, where he first promulgated his peculiar doctrines. His theory, which strongly resembles that of John Brown, points to excita tion or irritation as the fundamental fact in life. He found the principal cause of disease in over-irritation, which, primarily local, extends itself through sympathy to the other organs of the body, as in fever. His lectures were attended by great numbers of students, who received with the utmost enthusiasm the new theories which he pro pounded. In 1816 he published his Examen de la doctrine mcdlcaJe gcncralement adoptee, which drew down upon its author the hatred of the whole medical faculty of Paris. By degrees his doctrines triumphed ; and were adopted in the writings and practice of the best physicians, and even in the medical school itself, long before their propounder held office in that institution. In 1831 lie was appointed professor of general pathology in the academy of medicine, and taught with great applause till his death in 1838. The recent development of physiological science has shown that his theories are but partially true, and are of little value as a general explanation of disease. Of his worts, which are very numerous, the most important are the Examen and De I* Irritation et de la Folie.  BROUSSONET,, a distinguished French naturalist, was the son of a schoolmaster, and was born at Montpellier in 1761. He was educated for the medical profession, and at the age of eighteen was appointed to fill a professor s chair. Botany seems to have been the science to which he was at first chiefly devoted ; and he laboured with much zeal to establish the system of Linnajus in France, &quot;With this view, as well as for his own improvement, he went to Paris, and visited the various museums and collections. He next came to England, and was admitted in 1782 an honorary member of the Eoyal Society. He published at London the first part of his work on fishes, Ichthyologies Dccas I. On his return to Paris he was appointed perpetual secretary to the Society of Agriculture, an office which the intendant Berthier de Sauvigny resigned in his favour. In 1789 he was nomi nated a member of the Electoral College of Paris, and for some time had the charge of superintending the supply of provisions for the capital. Under the Convention he had to leave Paris, and after some dangers he made his way to Madrid. The enmity of the French emigrants, however, drove, him from Spain, and afterwards from Lisbon, where he had sought an asylum. A.t last he went out as physician to an embassy which the United States sent to the emperor of Marocco ; and on this occasion his friend Sir Joseph Banks, informed of his distresses, remitted him 1000. After residing for some time at Marocco, he obtained from the French Directory permission to return to France, and was appointed by them consul at Teneriffe, where he resided for two years. On his return in 1797 he was chosen member of the Institute, and was reinstated in his botanical professorship at Moutpellier, with the direction of the botanical garden. He was afterwards elected a member of the legislative body, but died of apoplexy on the 27th July 1807. France is indebted to him for the intro duction of the Merino sheep and the Angora goat. None of his works are now of importance.  BROUWER,, a Dutch painter, was born at Haarlem in 1608, of very humble parents, who bound him apprentice to the painter Frank Hals. Brouwer had an admirable eye for colour, and much spirit in design ; and these gifts his master appears to have turned to his own profit, while his pupil was half starved. As the result of this ungenerous treatment, Brouwer was frequently brought into low company and dissipated scenes, which he delineated with great spirit and vivid colouring in his pictures. The unfortunate artist died in a hospital at Antwerp in 1640, at the early age of thirty-two, consequently his works are few and rarely met with. The largest collection of his masterpieces is in the picture gallery at Munich.  BROWN,, the first American novelist who acquired an European reputation, and the first American who made literature a profession, was bcrn of Quaker parents in Philadelphia, January 17, 1771. A youth of delicate constitution and retiring habits, he early devoted himself to study ; his principal amusement was the invention of ideal architectural designs, devised on the most extensive and elaborate scale. This characteristic talent for construction subsequently assumed the shape of utopian projects for perfect commonwealths, and at a later period of a series of novels distinguished by the ingenuity and consistent evolution of the plot. The transition between these intellectual phases is marked by a juvenile romance entitled Carsol, not published until after the author s death, which professes to depict an imaginary community, and shows how thoroughly the young American was inspired by Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft, whose principal writings had recently made their appearance. From the latter he derived the idea of his next work, Alcuin, an enthusiastic but inexperienced essay on the question of woman s rights and liberties. From Godwin he learned his terse style, condensed to a fault, but too laconic for eloquence or modu lation, anel the art of developing a plot from a single psychological problem or mysterious circumstance. The novels which he now rapidly produced offer the strongest affinity to Caleb Williams, and if inferior to that remarkable work in the subtlety of mental analysis, greatly suipass it in affluence of invention and intensity of poetical feeling. All are wild and weird in conception, with incidents border ing on the preternatural, yet the limit of possibility is never transgressed. In Wieland, the first and most striking, a seemingly inexplicable mystery is resolved into a case of ventriloquism. .4r^wr J/frrywisremarkable for the descrip tion of the epidemic of yellow fever in New York in 1798, which had proved fatal to the author s most intimate friend. Edgar Hvntly, a romance rich in local colouring, is remark able for the effective use made of somnambulism, and anticipates Cooper s introduction of the Bed Indian into fiction. Ormond is less powerful, but contains one character, ConstantiaDudley, which excited the enthusiastic aelmiration of Shelley, who was also deeply entranced by Brown s other romances. &quot; Nothing/ asserts Mrs Peacock, &quot; so blended 