Works of François Xavier Bichat

Marie François Xavier Bichat (14 November 1771 – 22 July 1802) is known as the father of histology. In a few years of vigorous research following the French Revolution, François Xavier Bichat, a young genius from Lyons working in Paris, attempted to define the properties of life by exploring aspects of existence that disappeared with death.

His methods were both anatomical (he adopted the notion of tissues as anatomical structures and used surgical methods) and philosophical (he classified life functions into two types: animal and organic).

For Bichat, chemistry possesses its simple bodies, which by various combinations, form compound bodies; likewise anatomy has its simple tissues, which by combining compose the organs.

Bichat’s central theoretical innovation, set forth in his 1800 Treatise on Membranes, was the substitution of the membrane unit in the analysis of health and disease.

Building on the tradition of pathological anatomy established by Giovanni Battista Morgagni, Bichat insisted that diseases could not correctly identified as diseases of specific organs, but as diseases of specific tissues.

Two years later after publication of Treatise on Membranes he produced General Anatomy Applied to Physiology and Medicine.
Works of François Xavier Bichat