202 GENEVA SOCIETY OF PHYSICS AND NATURAL HISTORY. 



antagonistic to the scientific tastes of Chossat, who, while attending the 

 lecture-room of theology to please his parents, was secretly studying 

 anatomy, under the auspices and direction of Dr. Coindet, then at the 

 head of the Hospital of Geneva, who gave him access to his library and 

 to the hospital. In 1815, after having obtained the degree of bachelor of 

 sciences, Ohossat left for Paris, where he zealously devoted himself to 

 the medical and physiological sciences, under the auspices of Magendie, 

 his instructor, and at a later date his friend. In addition to his medical 

 studies, he assiduously attended courses of lectures on physics, by Gay- 

 Lussac and Biot; on chemistry, by Th^nard ; on comparative anatomy, by 

 Cuvier; on astronomy, at the observatory, by Arago; and on the differen- 

 tial and integral calculus and applied mechanics, by Lacroix and Poissou. 

 These numerous studies did not prevent him from undertaking original 

 researches, for, in 1817, he published his first memoir, "0» the relation 

 of the sine of refraction to the refracting media of the c?/e"; and the year 

 following a second memoir, "0» the curvature of the media of the e^/e" 



United by ties of friendship with one of his former school-compan- 

 ions. Dr. J. L. Pr^vostj from Edinburgh, Chossat made with him, in 

 the course of the same year (1818), a great number of experimental 

 researches on death by cold and on the mechanism of refrigeration — 

 experiments briefly stated in his thesis for the degree of doctor, which 

 was the object of his labors for the year 1819. 



In 1820 he presented to the Academy of Sciences a memoir "0» the 

 influence of the nervous system on animal heat.''' In this work, which he 

 made the subject of his thesis, and which confirmed the former researches 

 of Brodie and Legallois, he attributed to the ganglionic nervous system 

 the power of directly developing heat, independently of the combustion 

 exercised by respiration. Bis conclusions are not all now admitted, but 

 the facts observed were exact, and only their interpretation has varied 

 since then. 



After having received the degree of doctor in 1820, Chossat passed 

 several months in England, where his scientific researches, already known, 

 caused him to be kindly welcomed by Brodie, Astley Cooper, Aber- 

 nethy, Humphrey Davy, et al. He visited the faculties of Edinburgh and 

 Dublin, and then returned to Geneva, whence he soon set out as private 

 physician to an Austrian countess, with whom he traveled for several 

 years in Germany, France, and Switzerland, and in the south. During 

 these travels he made prolonged sojourns in the most important cities, 

 liassing all his winters in Italy, which he learned to know throughly. 

 Meanwhile, however, he did not abandon study and experiment; it is 

 in fact to this period that we trace several of his works. It was dur- 

 ing a long stay at Pisa, in 1824, that he completed a memoir " On the 

 analysis of the urinary functions,'" in which he sought experimentally the 

 circumstances in man influencing the secretion and composition of urine. 

 This very important memoir, which contains new and numerous observa- 

 tions, won the prize for experimental physiology at the Academy of 



