B I C 



384 



B I C 



ftml of those who died 420. Several of the inmates among 

 the poor attain eighty yean of age : in the ten yean just 

 mentioned, the lowest number of that age at any one time 

 was I'..', the higheit number 193. 



The part devoted to the purpose ot a prison consists of six 



File* of building of several stories, with iron grated windows, 

 t is under the direction of the Prefecture of Police, and the 

 Prefecture of the department of the Seine. A company of 

 veterans lodged in the prison serve to maintain order. The 

 prison was at first intended for 400 prisoners, but during the 

 year 181 7 the average number of its inmates was SOU. 



Previous to the year 1819, the management of this prison 

 was very bad ; and though several very important reforms 

 took place at that period, there are still many things that 

 want improvement. The bread of the prisoners is of a bad 

 quality ; and the ' canteen ' or tap-house, kept by the 

 gaoler, is the source of gross corruption and oppression. 



The prisoners, with the exception of those to be tried, those 

 condemned to irons, and the sick, are set to work : of the pro- 

 duce of each prisoner's labour one-third goes to the govern- 

 ment, one-third to the prisoner himself, and the other third 

 goes to form a fund for him at his discharge from the BieStre. 

 Two large wards, one for medical, the other for surgical 

 cases, form the infirmary ; there is a third ward for those who 

 have cutaneous diseases, and who are not counted among 

 the sick. There is usually about one in ten of the prisoners 

 in the infirmary. 



This union of the prison and of the poor-house and hos- 

 pital in the same building is considered a great evil. (Du- 

 laure s History nf Paris.) 



BICHAT, MARIE FRANCOIS XAVIER, an emi- 

 nent French anatomist and physiologist, was born Nov. 14, 

 1771, at Thoirotte in the department of the Ain. He was 

 the eldest son of Jean Baptiste Bichat, doctor of medicine, 

 of the University of Montpellier, and of Marie Rose Bichat. 

 He received the rudiments of his education at Nantua ; and 

 in 1788 entered the school of St. Yrfinee at Lyons, where 

 he showed a peculiar fondness for mathematics. From this 

 seminary, while diligently pursuing the study of natural phi- 

 losophy, he was driven by the Revolution, and returned to 

 the residence of his father, under whom he began the study 

 of anatomy ; but his taste for mathematics predominating, 

 he again went to Lyons in order to prosecute his favourite 

 study, although, probably at the desire of his father, he at 

 the same time attended a course of anatomy, and regularly 

 visited the hospital of Lyons. Whatever may have been 

 the ardour with which he devoted himself to the study of 

 philosophy, it is certain that the facility with which he over- 

 came the first difficulties of practical anatomy attracted the 

 notice of his teachers, who, on becoming further acquainted 

 with him, were still more impressed with the indications he 

 gave of mental acuteness. Driven a second time from Lyons 

 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 acquaint- 

 ance in this city, he entered the school of Desault, and dili- 

 gently 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 on the next 

 day, at the close of the lecture, in the presence of the second 

 surgeon of the hospital, this abstract was publicly read. It 

 chanced one day that the pupil whose turn it was to give 

 the abstract of the lecture of the preceding day was alwnt : 

 Ku-liat stepped forward from the crowd of pupils and offered 

 to supply nis place. His account was clear, accurate, and 

 full : and was delivered with extraordinary calmness and 

 precision. It was observed that he was very young ; and 

 it was found that he had not been a pupil more than a 

 month. Desault, on hearing this from his colleague, 

 iiiry, sent for Bichat, and from his very first conver- 

 sation with the young man, formed such an estimate of 

 him that he insisted on his immediately coming to reside 

 with him ; and subsequently adopted him as his son, asso- 

 ciated him in his labours, and destined him for his suc- 

 cessor. Bichat continued to live with his master, in un- 

 interrupted friendship, until the death of Desault, which 

 took place in the short space of two years from the com- 

 mencement 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 be- 

 taking himself to rcposo, he 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, which was not 

 vigorous, received a severe shock from this excessive la- 

 bour; he appears to have suffered particularly from the ex- 

 ertion of public speaking, and in a short time his pursuits 

 were interrupted by an attack of hicmoptysis, 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 an intensity 

 to the last degree imprudent, and which for his own t-ake, 

 and for the sake of science, is deeply to be deplored. His 

 days he spent in public teaching, and his nights in the 

 composition of his works. No entreaties of his friends, no 

 signs of returning disease, which again more than MI Hi 

 ciently indicated the danger of his course, could induce him 

 to moderate his labour. On the contrary, although no\r 

 attacked with severe and constantly increasing dyspeptic 

 symptoms, with a stomach scarcely able to digest any kind 

 of food, he spent, during the heat of summer, several hours 

 daily in a low and damp room, full of putrid exhalations 

 arising from the maceration of animal substances, the li- 

 entering into the composition of which he was analyzing 

 and studying. One day when he had been in this pla<'u 

 longer than usual, or when, from previous exhaustion, he 

 had been more powerfully impressed by its influence, he 

 felt giddy on leaving the room, in consequence probably of 

 the miasma to which he had been exposed. 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 with some 

 diiliculty ; hut the next day, notwithstanding he was suffer- 

 ing under violent headache', he thought himself sufficiently 

 recovered to pursue his ordinary occupations, and accord 

 ingly began his u.ual 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. 

 This was in the thirty-Crst year of his age ; and thus pe- 

 rished a youth, for he had scarcely arrived at manhood, of 

 extraordinary genius and energy a melancholy example of 

 a life which promised to be one of uncommon brilliance 

 and usefulness, cut short by t.he intensity of its devotion to 

 science. 



Bichat gave an impulse to the progress of physiology, 

 which is still powerfully felt not only in France, hut in ( 

 Britain, and in every other country in which the sciei 

 known. The idea had been suggested before his time, that the 

 animal Ixxly consists of a congeries of organs, and that there 

 are primary substances which enter in common into the 

 composition of the several organs ; hut he was the first, by 

 a systematic analysis, to reduce the complex structures uf 

 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 Generate, a work which alono 

 would have given him immortality ; which, in the produc- 

 tion of the material that constitutes its subject matter, indi- 

 cates 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; and which, written wholly in nights 

 succeeding such days as were spent by him, was composed 

 and published in the space of a year. Scarcely had this 

 work, which was immediately and 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 nn elaborate work, entitled ' Recherches physiolo- 

 giques sur la Vic et la Mort,' in which he suggested and 

 developed the distinction between the organic and the ani- 

 mal life, a distinction of scarcely less importance to the 

 surgeon and physician, than to the speculative and expert- 



