CHAPTER VIII

BICHAT AND THE BIRTH OF HISTOLOGY

We must recognize Bichat as one of the foremost men in biological history, although his name is not well known to the general public, nor constantly referred to by biologists as that of one of the chief luminaries of their science. In him was combined extraordinary talent with powers of intense and prolonged application; a combination which has always produced notable results in the world. He died at the age of thirty-one, but, within a productive period of not more than seven years, he made observations and published work that created an epoch and made a lasting impression on biological history.

His researches supplemented those of Cuvier, and carried the analysis of animal organization to a deeper level. Cuvier laid the foundations of comparative anatomy by dissecting and arranging in a comprehensive system the organs of animals, but Bichat went a step further and made a profound study of the tissues that unite to make up the organs. As we have already noted in a previous chapter, this was a step in reaching the conception of the real organization of living beings.

Buckle's Estimate of Bichat.--It is interesting to note the impression made by Bichat upon one of the greatest students of the history of civilization. Buckle says of him: "Great, however, as is the name of Cuvier, a greater still remains behind. I allude, of course, to Bichat, whose reputation is steadily advancing as our knowledge advances; who, if we compare the shortness of his life with the reach and depth of his views, must be pronounced the most profound thinker and consummate observer by whom the organization of the animal frame has yet been studied.

"We may except Aristotle, but between Aristotle and Bichat I find no middle man."

Whether or not we agree fully with this panegyric of Buckle, we must, I think, place Bichat among the most illustrious men of biological history, as Vesalius, J. Müller, Von Baer, and Balfour.

Marie François Xavier Bichat was born in 1771 at Thoirette, department of the Ain. His father, who was a physician, directed the early education of his son and had the satisfaction of seeing him take kindly to intellectual pursuits. The young student was distinguished in Latin and mathematics, and showed early a fondness for natural history. Having elected to follow the calling of his father, he went to Lyons to study medicine, and came under the instruction of Petit in surgery.

Bichat in Paris.--It was, on the whole, a fortunate circumstance for Bichat that the turbulent events of the French Revolution drove him from Lyons to Paris, where he could have the best training, the greatest stimulus for his growth, and at the same time the widest field for the exercise of his talents. We find him in Paris in 1793, studying under the great surgeon Desault.

He attracted attention to himself in the class of this distinguished teacher and operator by an extemporaneous report on one of the lectures. It was the custom in Desault's classes to have the lectures of the professor reported upon before an assistant by some student especially appointed for the purpose. On one occasion the student who had been appointed to prepare and deliver the review was absent, and Bichat, who was gifted with a powerful memory, volunteered without previous notice to take his place. The lecture was a long and difficult one on the fractures of the clavicle, but Bichat's abstract was so clear, forceful, and complete that its delivery in well-chosen language produced a great sensation both upon the instructor and the students. This notable performance served to bring him directly to the attention of Desault, who invited him to become his assistant and to live in his family. The association of Bichat with the great surgeon was most happy. Desault treated him as a son, and when he suddenly died in 1795, the care of preparing his works for the printer was left to Bichat.

The fidelity with which Bichat executed this trust was characteristic of his noble nature. He laid aside his own personal interests, and his researches in which he was already immersed, and by almost superhuman labor completed the fourth volume of Desault's _Journal of Surgery_ and at the same time collected and published his scattered papers. To these he added observations of his own, making alterations to bring the work up to the highest plane. Thus he paid the debt of gratitude which he felt he owed to Desault for his friendship and assistance.

In 1797 he was appointed professor of anatomy, at the age of twenty-six, and from then to the end of his life, in 1801, he continued in his career of remarkable industry.

The portrait of this very attractive man is shown in Fig. 49. His face shows strong intellectuality. He is described as of "middling stature, with an agreeable face lighted by piercing and expressive eyes." He was much beloved by his students and associates, being "in all relations of life most amiable, a stranger to envy or other hateful passions, modest in demeanor and lively in his manners, which were open and free."

His Phenomenal Industry.--His industry was phenomenal; besides doing the work of a professor, he attended to a considerable practice, and during a single winter he is said to have examined with care six hundred bodies in the pursuance of his researches upon pathological anatomy.

In the year 1800, when he was thirty years old, began to appear the results of his matured researches. We speak of these as being matured, not on account of his age or the great number of years he had labored upon them, but from the intensity and completeness with which he had pursued his investigations, thus giving to his work a lasting quality.

First came his treatise on the membranes (_Traité des Membranes_); followed quickly by his Physiological Researches into the Phenomena of Life and Death (_Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort_); then appeared his General Anatomy (_Anatomie Générale_) in 1801, and his treatise upon Descriptive Anatomy, upon which he was working at the time of his death.

His death occurred in 1801, and was due partly to an accident. He slipped upon the stairs of the dissecting-room, and his fall was followed by gastric derangement, from which he died.

Results of His Work.--The new science of the anatomy of the tissues which he founded is now known as histology, and the general anatomy, as he called it, has now become the study of minute anatomy of the tissues. Bichat studied the membranes or tissues very profoundly, but he did not employ the microscope and make sketches of their cellular construction. The result of his work was to set the world studying the minute structure of the tissues, a consequence of which led to the modern study of histology. Since this science was constructed directly upon his foundation, it is proper to recognize him as the founder of histology.

Carpenter says of him: "Altogether Bichat left an impress upon the science of life, the depth of which can scarcely be overrated; and this not so much by the facts which he collected and generalized, as by the method of inquiry which he developed, and by the systematic form which he gave to the study of general anatomy in its relations both to physiology and pathology."

Bichat's More Notable Successors.--His influence extended far, and after the establishment of the cell-theory took on a new phase. Microscopic study of the tissues has now become a separate division of the science of anatomy, and engages the attention of a very large number of workers. While the men who built upon Bichat's foundation are numerous, we shall select for especial mention only a few of the more notable, as Schwann, Koelliker, Schultze, Virchow, Leydig, and Ramon y Cajal, whose researches stand in the direct line of development of the ideas promulgated by Bichat.

Schwann.--Schwann's cell-theory was the result of close attention to the microscopic structure of the tissues of animals. It was an extension of the knowledge of the tissues which Bichat distinguished and so thoroughly investigated from other points of view. The cell-theory, which took rise in 1839, was itself epoch-making, and the science of general anatomy was influenced by it as deeply as was the science of embryology. The leading founder of this theory was Theodor Schwann, whose portrait is shown on page 245, where there is also a more extended account of his labors in connection with the cell-theory. Had not the life of Bichat been cut off in his early manhood, he might well have lived to see this great discovery added to his own.

Koelliker.--Albrecht von Koelliker (1817-1905) was one of the greatest histologists of the nineteenth century. He is a striking figure in the development of biology in a general way, distinguished as an embryologist, as a histologist, and in other connections. During his long life, from 1817 to 1905, he made an astounding number of additions to our knowledge of microscopic anatomy. In the early years of his scientific activity, "he helped in establishing the cell-theory, he traced the origin of tissues from the segmenting ovum through the developing embryo, he demonstrated the continuity between nerve-fibers and nerve-cells of vertebrates (1845), ... and much more." He is mentioned further, in connection with the rise of embryology, in