Xavier Bichat (1771-1802) was a French physiologist, anatomist and surgeon, creator of the anotomoclinic method for the diagnosis of diseases. Considered the founder of histology, he was one of the first physicians to relate pathologies from an anatomical and structural approach to the physiology of organs, specifically the tissues that make them up.
In the 16th century, pathologies were seen as a set of symptoms and affectations that occurred in the anatomy of people. The causes of diseases were known once the person died and the corpse could be studied, which implied that the treatment of diseases was a practice governed by ignorance.
Xavier Bichat is considered the creator of histology as a discipline. Source: Godefroy Engelmann
Bichat had a special interest in the study of medicine from a scientific perspective and refused to accept that the same laws that governed the physics of inorganic bodies were used to describe and characterize the processes of living organisms.
Biography
Early years
He was born on September 14, 1771 in the former French commune of Thoirette (current commune of Thoirette-Corsia in the department of Jura). His father was Jean-Baptiste Bichat, a Montepellier-trained physician, and his mother was Jeanne-Rose Bichat, Jean-Baptiste's cousin.
Before starting his life in medicine, Bichat studied the humanities. It was not until 1791 when at the age of 20 he took an interest in medicine and began his training in Anatomy in Lyon under the tutelage of Antoine Petit.
During the events of the Bichat Revolution he served as a medic in the army of the Alps; There he obtained experience in the area of surgery. He played this role until 1794, when, as a result of the Lyon Revolution, he was forced to move out of the city.
Life in paris
Bichat moved to Paris to complete his studies, this time under the tutelage of professors and surgeons Philippe Pinel (1755-1826) and Pierre Joseph Desault (1744-1795). The latter was the one who welcomed Bichat as a pupil given the remarkable abilities shown by him.
During his stay in Paris he worked hand in hand with Desault at the Grand Hospice de L´ Humanité (formerly called Hôtel Dieu), where he worked as a doctor throughout his career. Despite his remarkable results as a student, he was unable to obtain a degree in surgeon but as a chirurgien-externe.
In 1795 Desault died due to causes still unknown, but linked to the events of the Revolution. Bichat had more to do with the area of anatomy and physiology than with surgery, but he was still in charge of continuing and publishing his mentor's studies.
In 1796 Bichat and a group of colleagues founded the Société d´Emulation, which provided a space for personalities and medical professionals to discuss issues in the area. This scenario allowed the development of various investigations that were born thanks to scientific discussion.
Despite not possessing the title of surgeon, Bichat practiced as one. In 1977 he gave private anatomy classes, in which he showed his advances in tissue research, his methods and his results. It wasn't until 1801 that the hospital finally awarded him the title of surgeon.
Death
Bichat's health was gradually deteriorating due to pulmonary tuberculosis. On July 8, 1802, he accidentally fell down some stairs at the Grand Hospice de L´ Humanité.
This accident worsened his health much more, and weeks after that fall Xavier Bichat passed away.
Contributions
With special emphasis on the study of physiology and anatomy, Bichat worked with 600 corpses in one year. He performed autopsies and observed that the causes of death did not correspond to some general damage to a certain organ or structure as a whole, but to a part of it, in one of the tissues that make it up.
During his study of the tissues he was in charge of experimenting with them without the use of the microscope, but through the scientific experimental method. He applied methods of boiling, drying, putrefaction and dissolution with base and acid substances to the different tissues of the organs, in order to be able to differentiate and characterize them.
One of the greatest advances in modern histology was the contribution he made in identifying and characterizing 21 different types of tissues for each organ, which are the following:
- Cellular.
- Fibrotendinous tissue.
- Nervous of animal life.
- Muscular animal life.
- Nervous of organic life.
- Muscular organic life.
- Arterial.
- Mucous.
- Venous.
- Serous.
- Exhale.
- Synovial.
- Absorbent or lymphatic.
- Glandular.
- Bone.
- Dermal.
- Medullary.
- Epidermal.
- Tendinous.
- Hairy.
- Fibrous tissue.
Thanks to his discoveries, diseases were no longer named by the general symptom or manifest of the organ that was being affected, and began to be distinguished by the specific tissue that was having the alteration.
This implied an extension of the diagnosis. For example, instead of "inflammation of the heart" the terms myocarditis, pericarditis or endocarditis were adopted, depending on the tissue in which the involvement is present.
Plays
In 1799 Bichat began the publication of different books and articles with his findings. That same year he published his first book entitled Traité des membranes en général et des diverse membranes en particulier, which contains all the studies carried out on the 21 different types of tissues, as well as their classification.
Two years later he published the book Anatomie générale appliquée à la physiologie et à la médecine, in which he expands the study presented in his previous publication, but this time by using the microscope and considering all the organs of the human body.
The titles Disetation sur les membranes et sur leurs rapports généraux d'organisation and Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort are also worth mentioning as other of his contributions in the area of histology and physiology.
In the latter, he further develops the study of the tissues that make up the organs and raises the differentiation between normal and pathological tissues.
References
- Pérez, Jaime. "Marie-François Xavier Bichat and the birth of the anatomoclinical method" (January 2011) in History of Surgery. Retrieved on July 3, 2019 from com.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. "Marie-François-Xavier Bichat" (July 2018) in Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved on July 3, 2019 from Encyclopædia Britannica: britannica.com
- Simmons, John. "Doctors and Discoveries: Lives that Created Today's Medicine" (1949). Houghton Mifflin Company. p 58-61.
- Fresquet, José. "François Xavier Bichat (1771-1802)" in History of Medicine. Retrieved on July 3, 2019 from History of Medicine: historiadelamedicina.org
- "Physiology". Def. 1e. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Recovered from merriam-webster.com
- "Anatomy". Def. 1e and 2e. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary. Recovered from merriam-webster.com