Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/603

* BROADSTAIRS. 527 BROCA. BEOAD'STAIRS i foniierly Bradstoue) . A town on the coast of Kent. Kngland. about three miles southeast of ilar^'ate (Map: Enghmd, H o). It is a popular summer resort and has a small pier built early in the Sixteenth Century, and an archway leading to the shore supposed to have been erected in 1540. Population, in 1801, 5234: in UlOl, 6460. BROADSWORD. A sword with a broad blade, for cutting only, not for stabbing, and therefore not sharp at the point, like a sabre. BROAD'US, John Albebt (1827-95). An American clergyman, born in Ciil]iep('r County, Va. He graduated at the University of Virginia in 1850, was professor of ancient languages there from 1851 to 1853. and during this period was also pastor of the Baptist Church in Charlottes- ville. In 1859 he became professor of New Tes- tament interpretation and homiletics in the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, which had just been established in Greenville, S. C, but is now located in Louisville, Ky. For many years preceding his death, he was president of the institution. BROADWAY. The principal thoroughfare of ew York, and one of the most important business streets in the world. Beginning at Bowling Green, near the southern extremity of Manhattan Island, it runs north to Central Park, and is thence continued by the extension formerly called the Boulevard, now a part of Broadway, to the upper part of the island. Broadway is practically a continuous road to Albany and bears the same name in many of the Hudson River towns through which it passes. The first grant nf a lot on Broadway was made in 1643 to Martin Kregier, whose tavern, at the present Xo. 9, later became Burns's Coffee House, and subsequently the Atlantic Gardens. In the early part of the Nineteenth Century, various portions of Broad- way, then only some two miles long, became in turn the fashionable residence section of the city. Now the street below Central Park is given up almost exclusively to business. Below Cham- bers Street it has many 'skyscrapers,' housing the offices of great corporations. Then follows the wholesale dry goods district, which at Eighth Street gives wa.v to the shopping district, fol- lowed above Twenty-third Street by the great hotels and theatres. From Fiftieth Street north the street is more and more given over to apart- ment-houses. A part of the rapid-transit subway of New York has been excavated under the sur- face of Broadway. BROAD-WINGED HAWK. See Buzz.a.rd. BROB'DINGNAG. A -I range land described in Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726). The in- habitants of this wonderful country are repre- .sented as giants, about 'as tall as an ordinary spire-steeple.' Everything else is on the same enormous scale, whence the adjective brobding- iiagian has arisen as a sjTionyni of gigantic. The name is frequently, though incorrectly, spelled lirobdir/nar/. Swift wrote a mock letter from Captain Gulliver to his cousin Sympson, pur- porting to be dated April 27. 1727, but first I'ul>lished in 1735, in which complaint was made that Brobdingnag had l)een wrongly printed for Brobdingrag, but this was only a feint to mystify the public. See Swarr, .Ioxatiian. BRO'CA, Paul (1824-80). A French anthro- pologist, bom at Sainte-Foy-la-Grande, Gironde. He studied at the Communal College of Sainte- Foy and the Ecole Polytechiii<iue and Faculte de Medecine of Paris, became in 184(! assistant in anatomy to the Faculte, in 1848 prosector, and subsequently professor of surgical pathology. At various times he also held appointmenl.s as sur- geon to important hospitals, including La Piti6 and La SalpCtri^re. In 1847, when he was con- nected as medical assistant with a commission for the preparation of a report on excavations in the Church of the Celestins, he began a thor- ough study of anthropology. In 1859, amid diffi- culties caused by the hostility or indifference of other scientists and by the opi)osition of the Government, which suspected political plots, he foimded the Anthropological Society of Paris. From the formation of this society, officially authorized in 1861, modern anthropological sci- ence may be said to date. Broca established in 1872 the Revue d'Anthropologie, among the fore- most periodicals of its class, in which many of his own works originally appeared. Finally he founded, in 1876, at Paris, the well-known Ecole d'Anthropologie, equipped with laboratories, a library, and a well-stocked museum. Among its numerous courses was one by himself on the comparative anatomy of the primates. The so- ciety, the school, and the laboratories are now known under the collective title of the Anthro- pological Institute. During all this time Broca was constantly occupied with researches, many important results of which were published in Instructions generates pour les reelicrehes aiithro- pologiques ( 1865) and Instructions craniologiques et ernniometriques (1875). In 1861 he made and announced his noteworthy discovery of the seat of articulate speech in the third convolution of the left frontal lobe of the brain, since commonly called the 'convolution of Broca.' Disease in this convolution, cnitting off the blood-supply from it, or severing the fibres that lead from it to other parts of the brain, causes inability to make the effort needed to pronounce words or to read aloud. (See Aphasia; Nervous Ststem.) The impor- tance of Broca's contributions to anthropology cannot be overestimated. Broca's activities were many-sided. He was one of the three directors of public assistance through the Franco-Prussian War, and from 1880 a permanent Senator. He was also inter- ested in literature and aesthetics, and has been described as an attractive raconteur and conver- sationalist. His friend and colleague, M. .lacques Bertillon, is quoted as having said of him, "Rarely has there been a mind so active, so equally open to all kinds of knowledge, and so equally fond of all kinds." His energy as both teacher and writer was truly enormous. Besides luunerous memoirs on a wide range of subjects, and an extensive list of contributions to the Bulletins of the Anthropological Society and the Revue d'Anthropologie, he published the celebrat- ed work, Ves anivri/smes, et de leur traiteinent (1856) ; L'ethnologie de la France (1859) ; Re- cherches sur Vhybriditc animate en g&n^ral et stir Vhybriditi humaine enparticulier (1860) ; Traiti des tumeurs (1865-69) ; Mimoires sur les carac- teres physiques de Vhomme prHiistorique ( 1809) ; and M (moires d'anthropologie (4 vols., 1871-83). ('onsilt Correspondance de Paul lirora (2 vols., Paris, 1886). A statue of him by Choppin was placed in the Ecole de Mfdecine in 1887. Consult the biography by Pozzi (Paris, 1880).