Pierre Jean George, a distinguished writer and physician at Paris, was born at Conac in 1757. His father, Jean Baptiste Cabanis, was a lawyer of eminence, and chief magistrate of a district in the Lower Limousin, highly respected for his great acquirements and integrity, and entitled to the gratitude of his country for the many improvements he has introduced in agriculture and farming. Young Cabanis was sent at ten years of age to the college of Brives; and he afterwards studied at Paris, where he devoted himself to the acquisition of classical knowledge. At first he paid no attention to the lectures of his professors; but afterwards, of his own accord, he resumed those branches of his education in which he had remained deficient; and devoted himself entirely to the cultivation of his mind.

Thus constantly occupied, two years had passed away, when he received the offer of the place of secretary to a Polish nobleman. This offer he embraced without hesitation, and, though only sixteen, committed himself into the hands of strangers, in a distant country, which was represented to him as in a state of barbarism. This was in 1773, the year during which that diet was sitting which was to deliberate upon giving its sanction to the first partition of Poland. The corrupt intrigues and compulsory measures which were practised on that occasion, inspired him with a contempt for mankind, and a degree of misanthropic gloom, which are generally the fruits of a later experience of human depravity. He returned to Paris two years afterwards, when Turgot, the friend of his father, was minister of finance. On being presented to this statesman he was received with kindness, and would soon have been placed in a situation perfectly conformable to his tastes and wishes, had not a court intrigue caused the sudden downfall of the minister.

He now felt the necessity of making up for the time he had lost, and again applied to his studies with his former ardour. He had contracted a friendship with the poet Roucher, who enjoyed some celebrity. This connection rekindled his taste for poetry; and the French Academy having proposed as a prize subject the translation of a passage in the Iliad, he not only ventured to appear as a competitor, but set about translating the entire poem. The two specimens which he sent to the Academy did not obtain any public notice, but they were judged of favourably by several persons of taste. He was soon, however, sensible of the emptiness of these applauses; and, urged by his father to choose a useful profession, he at length decided for that of medicine. Dubreuil offered to be his guide in the new and arduous career which he was commencing; and Cabanis continued for six years the pupil of this able master. In 1789 he published Observations sur les Hôpitaux, a work which procured him the appointment of administrator of hospitals at Paris.

His state of health requiring occasional relaxation, he fixed upon Auteuil, in the immediate vicinity of Paris, as his place of residence. He continued his intercourse with Turgot; was on terms of intimacy with Condillac, Thomas, and D'Alembert; and acquired the friendship of Holbach, Franklin, and Jefferson. During the last visit which Voltaire made to Paris, Cabanis was presented to him by Turgot, and read to him part of his translation of the Iliad, which that acute critic, though old, infirm, and fatigued with his journey, listened to with great interest, and bestowed much commendation on the talents of the author. Cabanis had now, however, long ceased to occupy himself with that work; and, even bade a formal adieu to poetry in his Serment d'un Médecin, which appeared in 1789. In the political struggle which now began to engross the general attention, Cabanis espoused with enthusiasm the cause of the revolution, to which he was attached from principle, and of which the opening prospects were thoroughly congenial to his active and ardent mind.

During the two last years of Mirabeau's life he was intimately connected with that extraordinary man, who had the singular art of pressing into his service the pens of all his literary friends. Cabanis united himself with this disinterested association of labourers, and contributed the *Travail sur l'Éducation Publique*; a tract which was found among the papers of Mirabeau at his death, and was edited by the real author soon afterwards in 1791. During the illness which terminated his life, Mirabeau confided himself entirely to the professional skill of Cabanis. Of the progress of the malady, and the circumstances attending the death of Mirabeau, Cabanis has drawn up a very detailed narrative, which is not calculated, however, to impress us with any high idea of his skill in the treatment of an acute inflammatory disease.

Condorcet was another distinguished character with whom Cabanis was intimate, and whom he endeavoured, though without success, to save from the destiny in which he afterwards became involved by the calamitous events of the revolution. Shortly after this he married Charlotte Grouchy, sister to Madame Condorcet and to General Grouchy; a union which was a great source of happiness to him during the remainder of his life.

After the subversion of the government of the terrorists, Cabanis, on the establishment of central schools, was named professor of Hygiene in the medical schools of the metropolis. Next year he was chosen member of the National Institute, and was subsequently appointed clinical professor. He was afterwards member of the Council of Five Hundred, and then of the Conservative Senate. The dissolution of the Directory was the result of a motion which he made to that effect. But his political career was not of long continuance. A foe to tyranny in every shape, he was decidedly hostile to the policy of Bonaparte, and constantly rejected every solicitation to accept a place under his government.

For some years before his death, his health became gradually more impaired, and he retired from the laborious duties of his profession, spending the greatest part of his time at the château of his father-in-law at Meulan. Here he soothed himself with reading his favourite poets, and even had it in contemplation to resume that translation of the *Iliad* which had been the first effort of his youthful muse. The rest of his time was devoted to kindness and benevolence, especially towards the poor, who flocked from all parts to consult him on their complaints. Cabanis died May 5, 1808, leaving a widow and a daughter.

Besides the tracts already mentioned, Cabanis was author of *Mélanges de Littérature Allemagne*, or Choix de Traductions de l'Allemagne, &c., Paris, Svo, 1797; *Du Degré de Certitude de la Médecine*, 1797 and 1803, containing a republication of his Observations sur les Répulsions, and his Journal de la Maladie et de la Mort de Mirabeau, &c.; together with a short tract on the punishment of the guillotine, which he thought the invention of demagogery, Oliver, and Sue, that sensibility remains for some time after decapitation. This tract had already appeared in the *Magasin Encyclopédique*, and in the first volume of the *Mémoires de la Société Médicale d'Emulation*. This new edition also contains his *Rapport fait au Conseil des Cinq-cents sur l'Organisation des Écoles de Médecine*; and a long dissertation entitled *Quelques Principes et quelques Vues sur les Secours Publics*. Quelques Considérations sur l'Organisation sociale en général, et particulièrement sur la nouvelle Constitution, 12mo, 1799. His principal work, however, is that entitled *Des Rapports du Physique et du Moral de l'Homme*, 1803, in two volumes, Svo. This work was republished the following year, with the addition of a complete analytical table by its annotator M. Destutt-Tracy, and alphabetical indexes by M. Sue. His *Compte d'État sur les Révolutions et les Réformes de la Médecine* appeared in 1863. Of this work we possess an excellent English translation, with notes by Dr Henderson. His only practical work on medicine is the *Observations sur les Affections Ostéopathiques en général, et particulièrement sur celles communes sous le nom de Rhumes de Poitrine*, et *Rhumes de Poitrine*, Svo, 1807. He also wrote many interesting articles in the *Magasin Encyclopédique*.

**CABBAGE.** See HORTICULTURE.

**CABBALA,** or KABBALAH, according to the Hebrew style, has a very distinct signification from that in which we understand it in our language. The word is an abstract, and means reception, a doctrine received by oral transmission. The rabbis who are called cabbalists study, principally the combination of particular words, letters, and numbers, by which means they pretend to discover what is to come, and to see clearly into the sense of many difficult passages of Scripture. There are no sure principles of this knowledge, which in fact depends upon some particular traditions of the ancients; for which reason it is termed cabbala. The cabbalists have abundance of names which they call sacred, and not only make use of in invoking spirits, but imagine that they derive great light from them. They tell us that the secrets of the cabbala were discovered to Moses on Mount Sinai; and that these have been delivered down to them from father to son without interruption, and without any use of letters; for to write them down is what they are by no means permitted to do. This is likewise termed the oral law, as passing from father to son, in order to distinguish it from the written law. There is another cabbala, called artificial, which consists in searching for abstruse and mysterious significations of a word in Scripture, from which are borrowed certain explanations, by combining the letters which compose it. This cabbala is divided into three species, viz., the Gematria, the Notaricon, and the Temurah. The first, or Gematria, consists in taking the letters of a Hebrew word for ciphers or arithmetical numbers, and explaining every word by the arithmetical value of the letters of which it is composed; the second, called Notaricon, consists in taking every particular letter of a word for an entire diction; and the third, called Temurah, or change, consists in making different transpositions or changes of letters, placing one for the other, or one before the other. Among the Christians, likewise, a certain sort of magic is, by mistake, called cabbala, and consists in using improperly certain passages of Scripture for magical operations, or in forming magical characters or figures with stars and talismans. Some visionaries among the Jews believe that our Saviour wrought his miracles by virtue of the ridiculous mysteries of the cabbala.

Wolfius has given an extended account of the cabbala, and of the numerous manuscripts and printed Jewish works in which its principles are contained, as well as abundant references to Christian authors who have treated of it. (Biblioth. Hebr. ii. 1191, sq.) See also Beer, *Geschichte der Lehren aller Secten der Juden, und der Cabbala*, Brünn, 1822, 2 vols. Svo.

**CABBALISTS,** or KABBALISTS, the Jewish doctors who profess the study of the cabbala. In the opinion of these men, there is not a word, letter, nor accent in the law, without some mystery in it. The Jews are divided into two general sects; the Karaites, who refuse to receive either tradition or the Talmud, or anything but the pure texts of Scripture; and the Rabbinitists, or Talmudists, who besides this receive the traditions of the ancients, and follow the Talmud. The latter are again divided into two other sects; pious rabbinitists, who explain the Scripture in its natural sense, by grammar, history, and tradition; and cabbalists, who, to discover hidden and mystical senses, which they suppose to have been couched therein by God, make use of the cabbala and the mystical methods above mentioned.

**CABENDA,** a seaport town of Western Africa, in Lower Guinea, 40 miles north of the mouth of the Zaire, Lat. 5° 33' S. Long. 15° 40' E. From the great beauty of its situation, and the fertility of the adjacent country, it has been called the paradise of the coast. The harbour is well sheltered and commodious, and the trade is considerable.