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If I do not deceive myself, my labors will complete the task begun by Mesmer, Lavater, Gall, and Bichat, and open up new paths in science. "There ends that fair life of mine, the daily sacrifice, the unrecognized silkworm's toil, that is, perhaps, its own sole recompense.
In fact, I may say there were three men to whom this idea occurred contemporaneously, although there were but two who carried it into effect, and only one who worked it out completely. The persons to whom I refer were the eminent physiologist Bichat, and the great naturalist Lamarck, in France; and a distinguished German, Treviranus.
The extraordinary genius of Bichat, to whom more than any other we owe this new method of study, does not require Mr. Buckle's testimony to impress the practitioner with the importance of its achievements. I have heard a very wise physician question whether any important result had accrued to practical medicine from Harvey's discovery of the circulation.
It had never been given explicit expression before the time of Bichat, though it is said that Bichat himself was somewhat indebted for it to his master, Desault, and to the famous alienist Pinel. However that may be, it is certain that all subsequent anatomists have found Bichat's classification of the tissues of the utmost value in their studies of the animal functions.
No man who has allowed himself to be caught in the revolutions of the gear of these huge machines can ever become great. If he is a doctor, either he has practised little or he is an exception a Bichat who dies young. If a great merchant, something remains he is almost Jacques Coeur. Did Robespierre practise? Danton was an idler who waited.
The first thing to strike the visitor as he entered was an admirable bust of Bichat, flanked on either side by smaller busts of Robespierre and Rousseau. A clock of the time of Louis XIV. stood between the windows, and marked the seconds with a noise which sounded like the rattling of old iron.
The apparition of a god would not have caused more commotion. Bovary raised his hands; Canivet stopped short; and Homais pulled off his skull-cap long before the doctor had come in. He belonged to that great school of surgery begotten of Bichat, to that generation, now extinct, of philosophical practitioners, who, loving their art with a fanatical love, exercised it with enthusiasm and wisdom.
Recent works of physiology still speak of the painful contraction which the stomach experiences during hunger, the friction of its sides against one another, and the action of the gastric juice on the texture of the digestive apparatus. The observations of Bichat, and more particularly the fine experiments of Majendie, are in contradiction to these superannuated hypotheses.
But the great triumph of the microscope as applied to anatomy has been in the resolution of the organs and the tissues into their simple constituent anatomical elements. It has taken up general anatomy where Bichat left it. He had succeeded in reducing the structural language of nature to syllables, if you will permit me to use so bold an image.
P , who has lent me the works of Bichat and Broussais, which he recommends me to read. He is a most agreeable companion, and as vivacious as if he was only twenty. He reminds me sometimes of my old friend Lady Dysart, whose juvenility of mind and manner always pleased as much as it surprised me.
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