MARIE-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER, a celebrated French anatomist and physiologist, was born at Thoirette in the department of Ain, in 1771. His father, who was himself a physician, initiated him at an early age in those studies which were to prepare him more particularly for the profession to which he had destined him. He studied first at the college of Nantua, and afterwards at Lyons; and was early distinguished for his activity of mind and facility in acquiring knowledge. In mathematics, and the physical sciences more especially dependent on abstract reasoning, he made rapid progress. He afterwards became passionately fond of natural-history, and devoted all his time to this new study; but his ardour was suddenly checked by the reflection that he was engaged in pursuits that were boundless in their object, and might lead him too far from his future profession, through which alone he aspired to celebrity. Bidding adieu, therefore, to his favourite occupations, he devoted himself to the study of anatomy and surgery, under the guidance of Petit, chief surgeon to the Hôtel Dieu at Lyons. Some time after he had fully engaged in this course of instruction, he was unable to rekindle his passion for mathematics, and he resumed his early studies, restricting himself however within such limits as did not interfere with his medical pursuits. Petit soon discerned the superior talents of his pupil; and, although the latter had scarcely attained the age of twenty, employed him constantly as his assistant in his professional labours. The revolutionary disturbances compelled Bichat to fly from Lyons and take refuge in Paris about the end of the year 1793. He there resumed his studies, and became a pupil of the celebrated Dessault; and after no long time his companion and his friend. The merit of Bichat was brought to the notice of Dessault by an accidental circumstance. It was the custom in the school, that the substance of the lecture of the preceding day should be recapitulated, as an exercise, before the whole class, by one of the pupils selected for this purpose; and one day when the pupil on whom this task devolved was absent, the professor asked if any one among his auditory would supply his place. Bichat volunteered his services, and acquitted himself to the admiration of all his hearers. Dessault, in particular, was strongly impressed with the superiority of his genius; and from that day Bichat became an inmate in his house, and was treated as an adopted son. Between the years 1793 and 1795 he actively participated in all the labours of Dessault. Notwithstanding these multiplied occupations, Bichat found means to prosecute his own researches in anatomy and physiology, to which he devoted every interval of leisure he could seize. The sudden and untimely death of Dessault was a severe blow to Bichat, but did not eventually relax his efforts. His first care seems to have been to acquit himself of the obligations he owed his benefactor, by contributing to the support of his widow and her son; and by conducting to a close the fourth volume of Dessault's Journal de Chirurgie. To this volume he subjoined a biographical memoir of its author, in which he pays a just tribute to his merits. His next object was to re-unite and digest in one body the different surgical doctrines which Dessault had advanced in fugitive papers, published in various periodical works. Of these he composed, in 1797, a work in two vols. 8vo, entitled Œuvres Chirurgicales de Dessault, ou Tableau de sa Doctrine, et de sa Pratique dans le Traitement des Maladies Externes; a work in which, although he professes only to explain the ideas of another, he develops them with the clearness and copiousness of one who is a perfect master of the subject. He was now at liberty to pursue the full bent of his genius, and soon arrived at those comprehensive and masterly views of physiology, by which eventually he gained so much reputation. Undisturbed by the storms which agitated the political world, he pursued with steadiness the course he had meditated, and directed his more immediate attention to surgery, which it was then his design to practise. We meet with many proofs of his industry and success at this period in the Recueil de la Société Médicale d'Emulation, an association of which Bichat was one of the most zealous and active members. Three memoirs which he communicated were published by the society in 1796; the first describing an improvement in the instrument for trepanning; the second a new process for the ligature of polyp; and the third, the distinction to be observed in fractures of the clavicle, between those cases requiring the assistance of art, and those in which its interference would be of no avail. In 1797 Bichat commenced a course of anatomical demonstrations. He had hired a small room for the purpose; but his merit as a teacher soon attracting a crowd of auditors, he was obliged to enlarge his theatre, and was also encouraged to extend the plan of his lectures, and to announce what had never hitherto been attempted by one so young and inexperienced, a course of operative surgery. The boldness of the enterprise was equalled only by its success. Bichat's reputation was now fully established, and he was ever after the favourite teacher with the students who resorted to the capital. In the following year, 1798, he gave, in addition to his course on anatomy and operative surgery, a separate course of physiology. A dangerous attack of haemoptysis interrupted for a time these heavy labours; but the danger was no sooner passed than he plunged into new engagements with the same ardour as before. He had now scope in his physiological lectures for a fuller exposition of his original views in the animal economy, which immediately excited much attention in the medical schools at Paris; and he was induced to publish them in a more authentic form. Sketches of these doctrines were given by him in three papers contained in the Memoirs of the Société Médicale d'Emulation. The doctrines contained in these memoirs were afterwards more fully developed in his Traité sur les Membranes, which appeared in 1800; and which immediately drew the attention of the medical world both at home and abroad. Some time previous to this he gave to the public a small work, in which he endeavoured to give, in a condensed form, the lessons of Dessault relative to the diseases of the urinary passages. In the notes to this volume we may perceive the germ of many of those views which were peculiar to Bichat.

His next publication was the *Recherches Physiologiques sur la Vie et sur la Mort*, in 1800, which consists of two distinct dissertations. In the first, he explains, at greater length than he had previously done, his classification of functions, and traces the distinction between the animal and organic functions in all its bearings. In the second, he investigates the connection between life and the actions of the three central organs, the heart, lungs, and brain. But the work on which he bestowed the most attention, and which contained the fruits of his most profound and original researches, is the *Anatomie Générale*, which was published in four volumes octavo in 1801.

Before Bichat had attained the age of eight-and-twenty, he was appointed physician to the Hôtel Dieu, a situation which opened an immense field to his ardent spirit of inquiry. In the investigation of diseases, he pursued the same method of diligent observation and scrupulous experiment which had characterized his researches in physiology. He learned their history, not from books, but by studying them at the bedside of his patients, and by accurate dissection of their bodies after death. He engaged in a long series of examinations, with a view to ascertain the exact changes induced in the various organs by diseases, which he conceived, in every instance, primarily to affect some one of their constituent textures, while the rest did not suffer any change, unless by the superintendence of some other disease. In the prosecution of these inquiries he had, in less than six months, opened above six hundred bodies. As intimately connected with the practical exercise of the healing art, he was anxious also to determine, with more precision than had hitherto been attempted, the effects of remedies on the body; and eagerly availed himself of the opportunities which his new appointment afforded him, of instituting a series of direct experiments on a very extensive scale. He began by giving singly different medicinal substances, and then watching attentively the phenomena that ensued. He then united them in various ways, first joining two together, then three, and so proceeding to more complicated combinations; and observed the particular changes in their mode of operating which resulted from their being thus combined. So wide a range of experiments, it is evident, could not have been conducted without assistance; and he selected forty of his young pupils to aid him in collecting the requisite observations. He had already, in this way, procured a vast store of valuable materials for his course of lectures on the Materia Medica, the completion of which was unfortunately prevented by his untimely death; but a great part of the facts were subsequently published in the inaugural dissertations of his pupils. Latterly, he had also occupied himself with framing a new classification of diseases.

During these arduous vocations, he never lost sight of his anatomical pursuits, and had commenced a new work on the subject, in which the organs were arranged according to his peculiar classification of their functions, under the title of *Anatomie Descriptive*. He lived only to publish the first two volumes of this work. It was, however, continued on the same plan, and completed in three volumes more, by MM. Buisson and Roux, who had been his most active assistants, and who appear to have been perfect masters of his ideas on the subject. His death was brought on by a fall from a staircase at the Hôtel Dieu; and although the accident did not at first appear to be serious, it excited so great a degree of fever, that his frame, already exhausted by excessive labour, and enfeebled by constantly respiring the tainted air of the dissecting-room, in which he had lately passed the greater part of his time, sunk under the attack. He died on the 22d July 1802, universally regretted by his pupils, and attended to the last by the widow of his benefactor, from whom he had never been separated. Every tribute of respect was paid to his memory; his funeral was attended by above six hundred of his pupils, and by a number of the physicians in Paris. His bust, together with that of Dessault, was placed at the Hôtel Dieu by order of the first consul, in joint commemoration of the man under whose fostering protection so bright a genius was first brought before the public, and of the pupil who nobly emulated the fame of so great a master.