Xavier Bichat

Xavier Bichat
Portrait of Bichat by Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine, 1799
Born
Marie François Xavier Bichat

(1771-11-14)14 November 1771
Thoirette, France
Died22 July 1802(1802-07-22) (aged 30)
Paris, France
Resting placePère Lachaise Cemetery
Known forthe concept of tissue[2]
Scientific career
FieldsHistology[1]
Pathological anatomy[1]
Signature

Marie François Xavier Bichat (/bˈʃɑː/;[3] French: [biʃa]; 14 November 1771 – 22 July 1802)[4] was a French anatomist and pathologist, known as the father of modern histology.[5][a] Although he worked without a microscope, Bichat distinguished 21 types of elementary tissues from which the organs of the human body are composed.[7] He was also "the first to propose that tissue is a central element in human anatomy, and he considered organs as collections of often disparate tissues, rather than as entities in themselves".[1]

Although Bichat was "hardly known outside the French medical world" at the time of his early death, forty years later "his system of histology and pathological anatomy had taken both the French and English medical worlds by storm."[1] The Bichatian tissue theory was "largely instrumental in the rise to prominence of hospital doctors" as opposed to empiric therapy, as "diseases were now defined in terms of specific lesions in various tissues, and this lent itself to a classification and a list of diagnoses".[8]

  1. ^ a b c d "Xavier Bichat". LindaHall.org. 14 November 2018.
  2. ^ Proceedings of the Indian Science Congress. 1940. p. 249.
  3. ^ "Bichat". Dictionary.com Unabridged (Online). n.d.
  4. ^ Nafziger 2002, p. 46
  5. ^ Banks 1993, p. 2
  6. ^ Boyd & Sheldon 1977
  7. ^ Roeckelein 1998, p. 78
  8. ^ Cite error: The named reference Shah was invoked but never defined (see the help page).


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