Thanatology and Anatomy of a French Surgeon Marie Francois Xavier Bichat

Abstract

French surgeon and anatomist Xavier Bichat founded the discipline of histology, the study of tissue, and he is sometimes called the “father of descriptive anatomy”. Bichat published four major works that created a springboard for the transformation of medicine through physiological investigation. Classification of tissue provided a new elementary unit for understanding disease, and in a sense sounded the death knell for humoral pathology – the idea that disease is due to an imbalance of essential humors. Bichat was under the formidable influence of Pierre Desault, a renowned surgeon and professor. Bichat’s talent was noted, and he soon became not only Desault’s most valued pupil but a lodger in his home. Desault had been a surgeon, but Bichat would adapt his methods and his approach to physiology. In 1798 Bichat began to publish articles concerning the potential classification of various tissues apart from the organs they formed. A book “Treatise on Membranes”, was published in 1799, and two years later he produced “General Anatomy Applied to Physiology and Medicine”. Taken together, these works express a major simplification.

Bichat’s predominant role in the development of histology needs to be qualified in several ways. In classifying twenty-one kinds of tissue, Bichat relied on external appearance as well as on determining how each type reacted with chemicals and other means of decomposing. He soaked tissue, baked it, boiled it, dried it out, and observed how it rotted. He examined how it reacted to acids and alkalis.

Publication of “Physiological research on life and death” in 1800 represented Bichat’s even larger aim of refashioning physiology. Bichat proceeded in two ways. He took over and extended the classificatory enterprise that had developed in medicine during the XVIII century. Also, using his experience in surgery and at autopsy, he applied experimental procedures to understand function. Moving from taxonomy to grasp of function in science is fairly common, but rarely does one individual achieve both.