BIAS. 



BICKERSTAFF, ISAAC. 



694 



general attention, their startling freedom and striking incongruities 

 excited almost as general astonishment, which was certainly not 

 lessened by a picture exhibited at the Koyal Academy in 1841, of a 

 ' Scene on board a Steamer crossing from Havre to Honfleur.' Still, 

 though M. Biard too often verges on caricature at least for English 

 taste there can be no question of hia remarkable success, in both the 

 styles of which the 'Slave Trade" and the'Hopital de' Fous,' on the 

 one hand, and the ' Crossing the Line,' and the ' Departure from a Bal 

 Masqud ' on the other, are the types. When he attempts a more 

 classical theme he becomes conventional and almost vapid. His 

 Harems and works of that class, though rather numerous, are likewise 

 not very favourable specimens of his pencil. The pictures which 

 have; made him so great a favourite with hia countrymen are those 

 more strictly burlesque ones, like the ' Distribution of Prizes in a 

 German School," 'LeTriomphe de 1'Embonpoint; ' ' Le Repas Inter- 

 rompu ; ' 'LaPoste Restante;' 'Le Concert de Famille;' ' Le Bain 

 d<! Famille ; ' ' the Parade of the National Guard," &c. Besides these 

 M. Kiard has painted a very large number of pictures in each of the 

 styles he practises ; and his industry has hitherto suffered little abate- 

 ment. He is still in the prime of his powers, and maintains his place 

 as one of the moat original painters of the age. 



(P. De Gembloux, in Nouvelle Biographic Univertdle.) 



BIAS, one of the sevi-n philosophers called the 'Wise Men of Greece.' 

 The exact dates of his birth ami death are not known, but it appears 

 from Herodotus (i. 170), that he was living at the time of the first 

 conquest of Ionia by the Persians under Cyrus, B.C. 544-539. He was 

 born at Priene, and his father was named Teutamus. One of the stories 

 told of him is, that when Alyattca, king of Lydia, besieged Priene, Bias 

 fatted two mules, and sent them out into the Lydian camp. The king, 

 surprised and dispirited by the apparent plenty which the good con- 

 dition of the animals indicated, sent a messenger to treat of peace. 

 On this, Bias directed the citizens to make heaps of sand, and cover 

 them lightly over with grain. He took care that the messenger should 

 gee these heaps ; and the man on his return represented the abundance 

 in the .city in such a light, that Alyattes immediately agreed to terms 

 of peace. A similar story is told by Herodotus of Thrasybulus, tyrant 

 of Miletus (i. 21, 22). The same author (i. 27) relates the manner in 

 which either Bias or Pittacus deterred Croesus from invading the 

 Grecian islands. These stories are worth notice, as indicating what 

 is to be understood of the Seven Wise Men. They were not philo- 

 sophers in the sense in which the word is commonly used, to designate 

 men who have entered deeply into speculative science, for Thales, the 

 founder of the Ionic school, was the only one of them who had any 

 claim to that title : they seem merely to have been men of high repute 

 for moral, political, or legislative knowledge, such as it then existed. 

 Thus the few remains of them which are extant are comprised in the 

 form of abort pithy maxims, generally in verse, with the sentiment of 

 which we are now so familiar, for the most part, as to regard them as 

 elf-evident propositions or truisms, and are therefore likely to under- 

 rate the merit of those who first enunciated them. Of this class of 

 sayings we find the following, among others, ascribed to Bias : Being 

 asked "What is difficult and unpleasant?" he replied, "To bear with 

 nobleness the changes from better to worse." " What is sweet to 

 man ? " Answer, " Hope." He said that it was better to arbitrate 

 between your enemies than between your friends, because one of the 

 enemies wag sure to turn to a friend, and one of the friends sure to 

 turn to an enemy." Life should be so ordered as if men were to live 

 a long time and a short one." " Be slow to set hand to work, but 

 what you begin abide by." " Take wisdom as the provision for travel- 

 ling from youth to age, for of all possessions that sticks the closest." 

 Agreeably to this, it is said that on one occasion, when all persons but 

 himself were collecting their valuables for flight, he replied to those 

 who expressed their wonder at his indifference, " I carry everything 

 of mine about me." He was celebrated for his skill in pleading causes, 

 which however he has the credit of having always employed on the 

 right side. His death took place, after he had pleaded a cause success- 

 fully, in extreme old age. After the exertion he reclined with his head 

 on the bosom of his grandson, and on the breaking up of the court 

 he was found to be dead. His fellow-citizens gave him a splendid 

 funeral at the public expense, and consecrated a temple to him, which 

 they called Teutamium. Bias is one of the speakers in the 'Symposium' 

 of Plutarch. 



There are three collections of the sayings of the Wise Men : two, 

 attributed to Demetrius Phalereus and Sosiades, are preserved in 

 Stobseus ; a third is by an unknown author. Diogenes Laertius and 

 Plutarch have preserved several apophthegms not found in these col- 

 lections. The first two collections are preserved in the editions of 

 Stobaeus ; the third was printed by the elder Aldus at the end of his 

 ' Theocritus," 1495. The most complete collection of these sayings is 

 by Job. Conr. Orelli, in the first volume of his ' Moralisten.' 



BICHAT, MARIE FRANCOIS XAV1ER, an eminent French 

 anatomist and physiologist, was born November 14, 1771, at Thoirette, 

 in the present department of the Ain. He was the eldest son of Jean 

 Baptiste Bichat, doctor of medicine, of the university of Montpellier. 

 At an early period he manifested a preference for the study of mathe- 

 matics, but he also mastered with much facility the first difficulties of 

 practical anatomy, which he had commenced under his father's tuition ; 

 and hia teachers, on becoming further acquainted with him, were 



impressed with the indications he gave of mental acuteneas. Driven 

 a second time from Lyon by the events of the revolution, he went in 

 1793 to Paris, in order to study surgery under the celebrated Desault, 

 at that time the great master of the surgical art. Without a single 

 introduction, it is said without even a single acquaintance in this city, 

 he entered the school of Desault, and diligently attended the lectures 

 of his master. In this school it was the practice for some chosen 

 pupils, each in his turn, to make an abstract of the lecture of the day, 

 and ou the next day, at the close of the lecture, in the presence of the 

 second surgeon of the hospital, this abstract was publicly read. On 

 one occasion the pupil whose turn it was to give the abstract of the 

 preceding day waa absent Bichat, who had not been a pupil more 

 than a month, stepped forward from the crowd of pupils and offered 

 to supply hia place. His account was clear, accurate, aud full ; and 

 was delivered with extraordinary calmness and precision. Desault had 

 a conversation with young Bichat soon after, and formed such an 

 estimate of hia abilities that he insisted on his immediately coming to 

 reside with him ; and subsequently adopted him as his son, associated 

 him in his labours, and destined him for his successor. Bichat con- 

 tinued to live with his master in uninterrupted friendship until the 

 death of Desault, about two years from the commencement of their 

 intimacy. After this event the first care of the pupil, as the best 

 expression of his gratitude and affection, was to collect, arrange, and 

 publish the works of his master. At the same time he opened a school 

 for teaching anatomy, physiology, and surgery ; dissected for his own 

 lectures ; carried on an extended and laborious series of experiments 

 on living animals ; gave a course of operative surgery ; and when in 

 the evening he returned home exhausted with the labours of the day, 

 instead of betaking himself to repose, devoted the greater part of the 

 night to the duty of putting in order the papers and works of his 

 friend and master. His constitution received a severe shock from this 

 excessive labour ; he appear* to have suffered particularly from the 

 exertion of public speaking, and in a short time his pursuits were 

 interrupted by an attack of haemoptysis, or spitting of blood. In the 

 confinement to his chamber which this alarming disease imposed, he 

 appears to have matured his views on some of the most interesting 

 departments of anatomy and physiology, and to have sketched the 

 plan of the works in which those views were subsequently developed. 

 No sooner had his malady disappeared than he resumed the whole of 

 his former occupations, which he pursued with no less intensity than 

 before, spending his days in public teaching and his nights in the 

 composition of his works. One day, when he had been longer than 

 usual in the place where he conducted his experiments on animal 

 tissues a low and damp room, full of putrid exhalations from the 

 maceration of animal substances or when, from previous exhaustion, 

 he had been more powerfully impressed by its malign influence, he 

 felt giddy on leaving the room. In this state, on descending the stairs 

 of the Hotel-Dieu, his foot slipped, and he received by the fall a severe 

 blow on the head. He was taken up insensible, and was carried home ; 

 but the next day he thought himself sufficiently recovered to pursue 

 his ordinary occupations, and accordingly began his usual round. In 

 a short time however he fainted from fatigue, and in a day or two 

 symptoms of fever came on, which soon assumed a typhoid character, 

 and proved fatal on the fourteenth day of the attack. Thus perished, 

 at the age of thirty, a young man of extraordinary genius and energj 

 a melancholy example of a lire which promised to be one of uncommon 

 brilliance and usefulness, cut short by the Intensity of its devotion to 

 science. 



Bichat gave an impulse to the progress of physiology which is still 

 powerfully felt not only in France, but in every country in which 

 the science is known. The idea had been suggested before hia time 

 that tb.-- animal body consists of a congeries of organs, and that 

 there are primary substances which enter in common into the com- 

 position of the several organs ; but he was the first, by a systematic 

 analysis, to reduce the complex structures of the body to their 

 elementary tissues, and to ascertain the properties, physical, chemical, 

 and vital, which belong to each simple tissue. This he has done to an 

 extent and with a degree of completeness truly astonishing in a first 

 attempt, in his ' Anatomie Ge'ne'rale,' a work which alone would have 

 given him immortality ; which in the production of the material that 

 constitutes its subject-matter indicates minute and laborious research, 

 elaborate and extended experiment, and great manual and practical 

 skill ; and in the general conclusions deduced and established, a truly 

 philosophical mind. Scarcely had this work, which was immediately 

 md universally recognised as a production of extraordinary genius, 

 appeared, before it was followed by his 'Anatomie Descriptive.' 

 Besides many separate memoirs of various excellence, he likewise pub- 

 lished an elaborate work, entitled ' Recherches physiologiques stir la 

 Vie et la Mort,' in which he suggested and developed the distinction 

 between the organic and the animal life a distinction of scarcely less 

 importance to the surgeon and physician than to the speculative and 

 experimentalising physiologist. 



(M. F. R. Buisson, Prtcit Hiatorique sur M. F. X. Bichat, Paris, 

 1802.) 



BICKERSTAFF, ISAAC, was born in Ireland probably about 1735. 

 Ho was one of the pages of Lord Chesterfield, who became Lord- 

 Lieutenant of Ireland iu 1746. Afterwards he became an officer in 

 the marines, in which service he continued until forced to quit under 



