François Joseph Victor, a celebrated French physician, was born at St Malo in 1772. From his father, who was also a physician, he received his first instructions in medicine; but at an early age he entered the service of the republic, first as a private soldier and non-commissioned officer, and afterwards as a surgeon in the navy. At the end of that period he went to Paris, where in 1803 he graduated as M.D. In 1805 he 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 lectures were attended by great numbers of students, who received with the utmost enthusiasm the new theories which he propounded. In 1816 he published his Examen des Doctrines Médicales, which drew down upon its author the hatred of the whole medical faculty of Paris. By degrees these doctrines triumphed; and gradually crept into the writings and practice of the best physicians, and even into the medical school itself, long before their proponent held office in that institution. In 1831 he was appointed professor of general pathology in the academy of medicine, and taught with great applause till his death in 1838. Of his works, which are very numerous, the most important, besides the Examen above mentioned, are the Histoires de Phlegmases Chroniques, Paris, 1808, 2 vols. 8vo; Traité de la Physiologie appliquée à la Pathologie; Paris, 1824; Commentaires des Propositions de Pathologie consignées dans l'Examen, Paris, 1829, 2 vols. 8vo; Le Cholera-morbis épidémique, Paris, 1832, 8vo, &c., &c.