From his father, who was also a physician, he received his first instructions in medicine, and he studied for some years at a college in Dinan named after him, "Collège François Broussais".

At the age of seventeen he entered one of the newly formed republican regiments, but ill-health compelled him to withdraw after two years.

Bichat's focus on the strong connection between physiology pathology can also be recognized in Broussais' medical theories.

[1] 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 views on the relation between life and stimulus, and on the physiological interdependence and sympathies of the various organs.

[4] Broussais' theory, known as medical physiology, argued that some diseases are just a result of irritation due to excitation or stimulation.