17° BIOLOGY AND ITS MAKERS 



intensity and completeness with which he had pursued' his 

 investigations, thus giving to his work a lasting quality. 



First came his treatise on the membranes (Trtiiic dcs 

 Membranes); followed quickly by his Physiological Re- 

 searches into the Phenomena of Life and Death (Recherches 

 Physiologiques sur la Vie et la Mort) ; then appeared his 

 General Anatomy (Anatomie Generale) in 1801, and his trea- 

 tise upon Descriptive Anatomy, upon which he was working 

 at the time of his death. 



His death occurred in i8ci, and was due partly to an 

 accident. He slipped upon the stairs of the dissecting-room, 

 and his fall was followed by gastric derangement, from which 

 he died. 



Results of His Work. — The new science of the anatomy 

 of the tissues which he founded is now known as histology, 

 and the general anatomy, as he called it, has now become 

 the study of minute anatomy of the tissues. Bichat studied 

 the membranes or tissues very profoundly, but he did not 

 employ the microscope and make sketches of their cellular 

 construction. The result of his work was to set the world 

 studying the minute structure of the tissues, a consequence 

 of which led to the modern study of histology. Since this 

 science was constructed directly upon his foundation, it 

 proper to recognize him as the founder of histology. 



Carpenter says of him : " Altogether Bichat left an impres 

 upon the science of life, the depth of which can scarcely be 

 overrated; and this not so much by the facts which he col- 

 lected and generalized, as by the method of inquiry whicl 

 he developed, and by the systematic form which he gave t( 

 the study of general anatomy in its relations both to physi- 

 ology and pathology." 



Bichat's More Notable Successors.— His influence ex- 

 tended far, and after the establishment of the cell-theory 

 took on a new phase. Microscopic study of the tissues has 



