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{{short description|French anatomist and pathologist (1771–1802)}}
{{Redirect|Bichat}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=November 2021}}
{{Infobox scientist
|name              = Xavier Bichat
|image             = Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine - Portrait of Marie François Xavier Bichat.jpg
|image_size        = 225px
|caption           = Portrait of Bichat by [[Pierre-Maximilien Delafontaine]], 1799
|birth_name        = Marie François Xavier Bichat
|birth_date        = {{birth date|1771|11|14|df=y}}
|birth_place       = [[Thoirette]], France
|death_date        = {{death date and age|1802|7|22|1771|11|14|df=y}}
|death_place       = [[Paris]], France
|resting_place     = [[Père Lachaise Cemetery]]
|occupation        = 
|residence         =
|citizenship       =
|nationality       = 
|alma_mater        =
|doctoral_advisor  =
|doctoral_students =
|known_for         = the concept of [[Tissue (biology)|tissue]]<ref>{{cite book|title=Proceedings of the Indian Science Congress|year=1940|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FWYbAAAAMAAJ|page=249}}</ref>
|author_abbrev_bot =
|author_abbrev_zoo =
|influences        = 
|influenced        =
|signature         = Bichat's signature.png
|footnotes         =
|field             = [[Histology]]<ref name="Lindahall"/><br>[[Pathological anatomy]]<ref name="Lindahall"/>
|work_institutions =
|prizes            =
}}
'''Marie François Xavier Bichat''' ({{IPAc-en|b|iː|ˈ|ʃ|ɑː}};<ref>{{Cite Dictionary.com|Bichat}}</ref> {{IPA|fr|biʃa|lang}}; 14 November 1771 – 22 July 1802)<ref name="Nafziger2002">{{harvnb|Nafziger|2002|p=46}}</ref> was a French [[anatomist]] and [[pathologist]], known as the father of modern [[histology]].<ref>{{harvnb|Banks|1993|p=2}}</ref>{{efn|[[Marcello Malpighi]], the first person to scrutinize the human body with a microscope, is also considered the father of histology.<ref>{{harvnb|Boyd|Sheldon|1977}}</ref>}} Although he worked without a [[microscope]], Bichat distinguished 21 types of elementary [[Tissue (biology)|tissues]] from which the organs of the human body are composed.<ref name="Roeckelein1998">{{harvnb|Roeckelein|1998|p=78}}</ref> He was also "the first to propose that tissue is a central element in [[human anatomy]], and he considered [[Organ (anatomy)|organ]]s as collections of often disparate tissues, rather than as entities in themselves".<ref name="Lindahall">{{cite web|title=Xavier Bichat|website=LindaHall.org|date=14 November 2018|url=https://www.lindahall.org/xavier-bichat/}}</ref> The [[buccal fat pad]] (also called Bichat’s fat pad) was named after him.

Although Bichat was "hardly known outside the French medical world" at the time of his early death, forty years later "his system of histology and [[pathological anatomy]] had taken both the French and English medical worlds by storm."<ref name="Lindahall"/> The Bichatian tissue theory was "largely instrumental in the rise to prominence of hospital doctors" as opposed to [[empiric therapy]], as "diseases were now defined in terms of specific [[lesion]]s in various tissues, and this lent itself to a classification and a list of [[Diagnosis|diagnoses]]".<ref name="Shah"/>

==Early life and training==
{{Multiple image|image1=Maison natale Bichat Thoirette Coisia septembre 2018 8.jpg|image2=Bichat's birthplace - Bust & plaque.jpg|alt2=Bust and plaque|direction=vertical|footer=Bichat's birthplace in Thoirette}}
Bichat was born in [[Thoirette]], [[Franche-Comté (province)|Franche-Comté]].<ref name="EB">{{harvnb|Chisholm|1911}}</ref> His father was Jean-Baptiste Bichat, a [[physician]] who had trained in [[Montpellier]] and was Bichat's first instructor.<ref name="EB"/> His mother was Jeanne-Rose Bichat, his father's wife and cousin.<ref>{{harvnb|Simmons|2002|p=58}}</ref> He was the eldest of four children.<ref name="Haigh 1984, p. 3">{{harvnb|Haigh|1984|p=3}}</ref> He entered the college of [[Nantua]], and later studied at [[Lyon]].<ref name="EB"/> He made rapid progress in [[mathematics]] and the [[physical sciences]], but ultimately devoted himself to the study of [[anatomy]] and [[surgery]] under the guidance of Marc-Antoine Petit (1766–1811), chief surgeon at the [[Hôtel-Dieu de Lyon|Hôtel-Dieu]] of Lyon.<ref name="EB"/>

At the beginning of September 1793, Bichat was designated to serve as a surgeon with the [[Army of the Alps]] in the service of the surgeon Buget at the hospital of [[Bourg-en-Bresse|Bourg]].<ref name="Science and Medicine in France 1984, p. 52">{{harvnb|''Science and Medicine in France''|1984|p=52}}</ref><ref name="Weber 2000 6">{{harvnb|Weber|2000|p=6}}</ref> He went home in March 1794,<ref name="Science and Medicine in France 1984, p. 52"/> then moved to [[Paris]], where he became a pupil of [[Pierre-Joseph Desault]] at the [[Hôtel-Dieu, Paris|Hôtel-Dieu]], "who was so strongly impressed with his genius that he took him into his house and treated him as his adopted son."<ref name="EB"/> He took active part in Desault's work, at the same time pursuing his own research in anatomy and physiology.<ref name="EB"/>

[[File:Œuvres chirurgicales ou exposé de la doctrine et de la pratique de P.-J. Desault - 1801.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Portrait of [[Pierre-Joseph Desault]] (left) and title page from Bichat's ''Surgical Works of Desault'', 2nd ed (right)]]
The sudden death of Desault in 1795 was a severe blow to Bichat.<ref name="EB"/> His first task was to discharge the obligations he owed his benefactor by contributing to the support of his widow and her son and by completing the fourth volume of Desault's ''Journal de Chirurgie'', which was published the following year.<ref name="EB"/><ref>{{harvnb|Ersch|1797|p=374}}</ref> In 1796, he and several other colleagues also formally founded the Société Médicale d'Émulation, which provided an intellectual platform for debating problems in medicine.<ref name="Simmons 2002, p. 59">{{harvnb|Simmons|2002|p=59}}</ref>

==Lecturing and research==
In 1797, Bichat began a course of anatomical demonstrations, and his success encouraged him to extend the plan of his lectures, and boldly to announce a course of operative [[surgery]].<ref name="EB"/> At the same time, he was working to reunite and digest in one body the surgical doctrines which Desault had published in various periodical works;<ref name="EB"/> of these he composed ''Œuvres chirurgicales de Desault, ou tableau de sa doctrine, et de sa pratique dans le traitement des maladies externes'' (1798–1799), a work in which, although he professes only to set forth the ideas of another, he develops them "with the clearness of one who is a master of the subject."<ref name="EB"/>

[[File:Xavier Bichat - Traité des membranes - Title page.jpg|thumb|100px|Title page of ''Traité des membranes'']]
In 1798, he gave in addition a separate course of physiology.<ref name="EB"/> A dangerous attack of [[haemoptysis]] interrupted his labors for a time; but the danger was no sooner past than he plunged into new engagements with the same ardour as before.<ref name="EB"/> Bichat's next book, ''Traité des membranes'' (''Treatise on Membranes''), included his doctrine of tissue pathology with a distinction of 21 different tissues.<ref name="Fye 1996, p. 761">{{harvnb|Fye|1996|p=761}}</ref> As worded by A. S. Weber,
{{blockquote|As soon as it appeared (January and February of 1800), it was regarded as a basic and classic text. It was cited in a host of other works, and almost all thinking men placed it with honor in their libraries.<ref name="Weber 2000 6">{{harvnb|Weber|2000|p=6}}</ref>}}

His next publication was the ''Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort'' (''Physiological Researches upon Life and Death'', 1800), and it was quickly followed by his ''Anatomie générale'' (1801) in four volumes, the work which contains the fruits of his most profound and original researches.<ref name="EB"/> He began another work, under the title ''Anatomie descriptive''<ref>{{Cite book|last=Bichat|first=Xavier (1771–1802) Auteur du texte|url=https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k6275895d|title=Traité d'anatomie descriptive par Xav. Bichat. Tome 1 / ... Nouvelle édition|date=1812|language=EN}}</ref> (1801–1803), in which the organs were arranged according to his peculiar classification of their functions but lived to publish only the first two volumes.<ref name="EB"/>

==Final years and death==
[[File:Vue de l'Hôtel-Dieu, prise du Petit Pont - c. 1830.jpg|thumb|left|upright|The [[Hôtel-Dieu, Paris|Hôtel-Dieu]] of Paris (drawn {{circa|1830}})]]
In 1800, Bichat was appointed physician to the Hôtel-Dieu. "He engaged in a series of examinations, with a view to ascertain the changes induced in the various organs by disease, and in less than six months he had opened above six hundred bodies. He was anxious also to determine with more precision than had been attempted before, the effects of remedial agents, and instituted with this view a series of direct experiments which yielded a vast store of valuable material. Towards the end of his life he was also engaged on a new classification of diseases.<ref name="EB"/>"

[[File:Louis Hersent - Mort de Xavier Bichat.jpg|thumb|''The Death of Xavier Bichat'' (assisted by Pierre-Jean-Baptiste Esparron and [[Philibert Joseph Roux]]) by [[Louis Hersent]] (1817 Salon)]]
On 8 July 1802, Bichat fell in a faint while descending a set of stairs at the Hôtel-Dieu.<ref name="Haigh 1973, p. 25">{{harvnb|Haigh|1973|p=25}}</ref> He had been spending considerable time examining some macerated skin, "and from which, of course, putrid emanations were being sent forth",<ref>{{harvnb|Pettigrew|1840|p=6}}</ref> during which he probably contracted [[typhoid fever]];<ref name="Haigh 1973, p. 25"/> "the next day he complained of a violent headache; that night, [[leech]]es were applied behind his ears; on the 10th, he took an [[emetic]]; on the 15th, he passed into a [[coma]] and became convulsive."<ref name="Haigh 1973, p. 25"/> Bichat died on 22 July, aged 30.<ref name="Nafziger2002"/>

[[Jean-Nicolas Corvisart]] wrote to the first consul [[Napoleon Bonaparte]]:
{{verse translation|lang=fr|Bichat vient de mourir sur un champ de bataille qui compte aussi plus d'une victime; personne en si peu de temps n'a fait tant de choses et si bien.|Bichat has fallen on a field of battle which numbers many a victim; no one has done in the same time so much and so well.<ref>{{harvnb|Rose|1857|p=226}}</ref>}}

Ten days after this, the French government caused his name, together with that of Desault, to be inscribed on a memorial plaque at the Hôtel-Dieu.<ref>{{harvnb|Pettigrew|1840|p=7}}</ref>

[[File:Tombe Bichat.jpg|thumb|upright|Bichat's grave in the [[Père Lachaise Cemetery]]]]
Bichat was first buried at Sainte-Catherine Cemetery. With the closing of the latter, his remains were transferred to [[Père Lachaise Cemetery]] on 16 November 1845, followed by "a cortège of upwards of two thousand persons" after a funeral service at [[Notre-Dame de Paris|Notre-Dame]].<ref>{{harvnb|''The Medical Times''|1846|p=190}}</ref>

==Vitalist theory==
Bichat is considered to have been a [[Vitalism|vitalist]], though in no way an anti-experimentalist:<ref name="Maulitz 2002, p. 15">{{harvnb|Maulitz|2002|p=15}}</ref>
{{blockquote|Bichat moved from the tendency typical of the French vitalistic tradition to progressively free himself from [[metaphysics]] in order to combine with hypotheses and theories which accorded to the scientific criteria of physics and chemistry.<ref>{{harvnb|''History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences''|2007|p=238}}</ref>}}
According to Russell C. Maulitz, "of the Montpellier vitalists, the clearest influence on Bichat was probably [[Théophile de Bordeu]] (1722–1776), whose widely disseminated writings on the vitalistic interpretation of life fell early into Bichat's hands."<ref name="Maulitz 2002, p. 15"/>

[[File:Xavier Bichat - Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort - Title page.jpg|thumb|100px|left|Title page of ''Recherches physiologiques sur la vie et la mort'']] In his ''Physiological Researches upon Life and Death'' (1800), Bichat defined ''life'' as "the totality of those set of functions which resist death",<ref name="Comprehensive Biochemistry 1986, p. 104">{{harvnb|Florkin|Stotz|1986|p=104}}</ref><ref name="Strauss2012">{{harvnb|Strauss|2012|p=79}}</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Fernández-Medina|2018}}</ref> adding:
{{verse translation|lang=fr|Tel est en effet le mode d'existence des corps vivans, que tout ce qui les entoure tend à les détruire.|Such is the mode of existence of living bodies that everything surrounding them tends to destroy them.<ref name="Comprehensive Biochemistry 1986, p. 104"/>}}

Bichat thought that animals exhibited vital properties which could not be explained through physics or chemistry.<ref name="Fye 1996, p. 761"/> In his ''Physiological Researches'', he considered life to be separable into two parts: the organic life ("{{lang|fr|vie organique}}"; also sometimes called the vegetative system<ref name="Roeckelein1998"/>) and the animal life ("{{lang|fr|vie animale}}", or animal system<ref name="Roeckelein1998"/>).<ref>{{harvnb|Weber|2000|pp=6–7}}</ref> The organic life was "the life of the heart, intestines, and the other inner organs."<ref name="Finger 2001, p. 266">{{harvnb|Finger|2001|p=266}}</ref> As worded by Stanley Finger, "Bichat theorized that this life was regulated through the ''système des ganglions'' (the ganglionic nervous system), a collection of small independent 'brains' in the chest cavity."<ref name="Finger 2001, p. 266"/> In contrast, animal life "involved symmetrical, harmonious organs, such as the eyes, ears, and limbs. It included habit and memory, and was ruled by the wit and the intellect. This was the function of the brain itself, but it could not exist without the heart, the center of the organic life."<ref name="Finger 2001, p. 266"/>

According to A. S. Weber,
{{blockquote|Bichat's use of the concept "vie animale" recalls the original Latin root anima or soul, the governor of movement, growth, nutrition and reason in the body in classical thought. Bichat's division is not new, and closely parallels the [[Plato]]nic and later Christian division of body and soul, and the animism of [[Paracelsus]], [[Jan Baptist van Helmont|van Helmont]], [[Georg Stahl]] and the Montpellier school of medicine.<ref>{{harvnb|Weber|2000|p=7}}</ref>}}

==Legacy==
[[File:Title page "Anatomie Generale Appliquee", 1801 Wellcome L0015081.jpg|100px|thumb|Title page of ''Anatomie générale'']]
Bichat's main contribution to medicine and physiology was his perception that the diverse body of organs contain particular tissues or ''membranes'', and he described 21 such membranes, including connective, muscle, and nerve tissue.<ref name="Roeckelein1998"/> As he explained in ''Anatomie générale'',
{{verse translation|La chimie a ses corps simples, qui forment, par les combinaisons diverses dont ils sont susceptibles, les corps composés [...]. De même, l'anatomie a ses tissus simples, qui, par leurs combinaisons [...] forment les organes.|[[Chemistry]] possesses its simple bodies, which, by various combinations, form compound bodies [...]. Likewise anatomy has its simple tissues, which by combining [..] compose the organs.<ref name="Simmons 2002, p. 59"/>}}

Bichat did not use a microscope because he distrusted it; therefore his analyses did not include any acknowledgement of cellular structure.<ref name="Roeckelein1998" /> Nonetheless, he formed an important bridge between the ''organ pathology'' of [[Giovanni Battista Morgagni]] and the ''cell pathology'' of [[Rudolf Virchow]].<ref>{{harvnb|''Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine''|1947|p=459}}</ref> Bichat "recognized [[disease]] as a localized condition that began in specific tissues."<ref name="Shah">{{harvnb|Shah|1994|p=10}}</ref>

[[Michel Foucault]] regarded Bichat as the chief architect in developing the understanding of the human body as the origin of illness, redefining both conceptions of the body and disease.<ref>{{harvnb|Miller|1993|pp=130–131}}</ref> Bichat's figure was of great importance to [[Arthur Schopenhauer]], who wrote of the ''Recherches physiologiques'' as "one of the most profoundly conceived works in the whole of French literature."<ref>{{harvnb|Crary|1992|p=78}}</ref>

===Honours===
[[File:Statue of Xavier Bichat in Paris (36454509682).jpg|160px|thumbnail|right|Bichat's statue by [[David d'Angers]] at the historic [[École de Chirurgie]] in Paris]]
A large bronze statue of Bichat by [[David d'Angers]] was erected in 1857 in the ''cour d'honneur'' of the [[École de Chirurgie]] in Paris, with the support of members of the Medical Congress of France which was held in 1845. Bichat is also represented on the [[Panthéon]]'s pediment,<ref name="Haigh 1984, p. 3"/> of which the bas-relief is D'Angers' work as well. The name of Bichat is one of the [[List of the 72 names on the Eiffel Tower|72 names inscribed on the Eiffel Tower]]. His name was given to the [[Bichat–Claude Bernard Hospital]].

[[George Eliot]] enthusiastically recounted Bichat's career in her 1872 novel ''[[Middlemarch]]''. In ''[[Madame Bovary]]'' (1856), [[Gustave Flaubert]], himself the son of a prominent surgeon, wrote of a physician character who "belonged to the great school of surgery that sprang up around Bichat, to that generation, now extinct, of philosopher-practitioners who, cherishing their art with fanatical passion, exercised it with exaltation and sagacity."<ref>{{harvnb|Flaubert|1992|p=262}}</ref>

==Gallery==
<gallery mode=packed heights=160>
David d'Angers - Fronton du Panthéon - Bichat.jpg|Relief of Bichat on the pediment of the [[Panthéon]]
Statue Bichat Promenade Bastion Bourg Bresse 21.jpg|Statue by D'Angers in [[Bourg-en-Bresse]]
Portrait of Marie Francois Xavier Bichat (1771-1802) Wellcome M0011378.jpg|Portrait by Choquet
Marie François Xavier Bichat (1906) - Veloso Salgado.png|Detail from [[Veloso Salgado]]'s ''Medicine Through the Ages'', [[NOVA University Lisbon]]
Zaragoza - Antigua Facultad de Medicina - Medallón - Bichat.jpg|Bust at the [[University of Zaragoza]] College of Medicine
</gallery>

==Notes==
{{Notelist}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Sources==
{{Refbegin|colwidth=25em}}
* {{cite book|last=Banks|first=William J.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ex9tAAAAMAAJ|title=Applied Veterinary Histology|publisher=Mosby-Year Book|year=1993|isbn=9780801666100|language=en}}
* {{cite book|last1=Boyd|first1=William|last2=Sheldon|first2=Huntington|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=94RrAAAAMAAJ|title=An Introduction to the Study of Disease|date=1 January 1977|publisher=Lea & Febiger|isbn=9780812106008|language=en}}
* {{cite EB1911|wstitle=Bichat, Marie François Xavier}}
* {{cite book|title=Comprehensive Biochemistry|year=1986|volume=34|isbn=9780444807762|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=913kIvdmb64C|last1=Florkin|first1=Marcel|last2=Stotz|first2=Elmer Henry|publisher=Elsevier Publishing Company }}
* {{cite book|last=Crary|first=Jonathan|author-link=Jonathan Crary|title=Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century|year=1992|publisher=MIT Press|url=https://archive.org/details/techniquesofobse0000crar|url-access=registration}}
* {{cite journal|last=Elaut|first=L.|date=July 1969|title=The theory of membranes of F. X. Bichat and his predecessors|journal=Sudhoffs Archiv|volume=53|issue=1|pages=68–76|issn=0039-4564|pmid=4241888}}
* {{cite book|last=Ersch|first=J.S.|year=1797|title=La France litéraire contenant les auteurs francais de 1771 à 1796|volume=1|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=py832qCSwNkC|language=fr}}
* {{cite book|last=Finger|first=Stanley|title=Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations Into Brain Function|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_GMeW9E1IB4C|access-date=1 January 2013|year=2001|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-514694-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Flaubert|first=Gustave|title=Madame Bovary|translator-last=Wall|translator-first=Geoffrey|publisher=Penguin Books|year=1992|orig-year=1856}}
* {{cite book|last=Fernández-Medina|first=Nicolás|title=Life Embodied: The Promise of Vital Force in Spanish Modernity|year=2018|publisher=McGill-Queen's University Press|isbn=9780773554085|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=BR1bDwAAQBAJ}}
* {{cite journal|last=Fye|first=W. Bruce|author-link=W. Bruce Fye|date=1 September 1996|title=Marie-François-Xavier Bichat|journal=Clinical Cardiology|language=en|volume=19|issue=9|pages=760–761|doi=10.1002/clc.4960190918|pmid=8875000|issn=1932-8737|doi-access=free}}
*{{cite book |first=Elizabeth |last=Haigh |title= Xavier Bichat and the Medical Theory of the Eighteenth Century |journal=Medical History. Supplement |location= London |publisher= Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine |year= 1984 |issue=4 |pages=1–146 |pmid=6398850 |pmc=2557378 |isbn=085484046X}}
* {{cite journal|last=Haigh|first=Elizabeth|title=Roots of the Vitalism of Xavier Bichat|journal=Bulletin of the History of Medicine|year=1973|volume=49|issue=1|pages=72–86|pmid=1093586|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FL-GAAAAMAAJ}}
* {{cite book|ref={{harvid|''History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences''|2007}}|title=History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences|volume=29|year=2007|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tUkoAQAAIAAJ}}
* {{cite book|last=Maulitz|first=Russell C.|year=2002|title=Morbid Appearances: The Anatomy of Pathology in the Early Nineteenth Century|publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=9780521524537|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=bV-JFXbWJ9oC}}
* {{cite book|ref={{harvid|''The Medical Times''|1846}}|title=The Medical Times|volume=13|year=1846|location=London|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=rhsUAAAAQAAJ}}
* {{cite book|last=Miller|first=James|title=The Passion of Michel Foucault|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1993|isbn=978-0-674-00157-2|location=Cambridge, Massachusetts|pages=130–131}}
* {{cite book|last=Nafziger|first=George F.|title=Historical Dictionary of the Napoleonic Era|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dcr7Zt2FEPoC&pg=PA46|access-date=1 January 2013|year=2002|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-8108-4092-8}}
* {{cite book|last=Pettigrew|first=Thomas Joseph|author-link=Thomas Pettigrew|title=Medical Portrait Gallery|year=1840|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=T1kUAAAAQAAJ}}
* {{cite book|ref={{harvid|''Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine''|1947}}|title=Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine|volume=40|year=1947|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=KUUdAQAAMAAJ}}
* {{cite book|last=Roeckelein|first=Jon E.|title=Dictionary of Theories, Laws, and Concepts in Psychology|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6mu3DLkyGfUC|access-date=1 January 2013|year=1998|publisher=Greenwood Publishing Group|isbn=978-0-313-30460-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Rose|first=Hugh James|author-link=Hugh James Rose|title=A New General Biographical Dictionary|volume=IV|location=London|year=1857|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ots8AQAAIAAJ}}
* {{cite book|ref={{harvid|''Science and Medicine in France''|1984}}|title=Science and Medicine in France|year=1984|isbn=9780674794009|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=J6tqAAAAMAAJ|last1=Lesch|first1=John E.|publisher=Harvard University Press }}
* {{cite book|last=Shah|first=Amil|title=Solving the riddle of cancer: new genetic approaches to treatment|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pH87AgAAQBAJ|year=1994|publisher=Dundurn |isbn=9781459725515}}
* {{cite book|last=Simmons|first=John G.|title=Doctors and Discoveries: Lives That Created Today's Medicine|url=https://archive.org/details/doctorsdiscoveri00john|url-access=registration|access-date=1 January 2013|year=2002|publisher=Houghton Mifflin Harcourt|isbn=978-0-618-15276-6}}
* {{cite book|last=Strauss|first=Jonathan|title=Human Remains: Medicine, Death, and Desire in Nineteenth-Century Paris|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=GoirQ2sid0sC|access-date=1 January 2013|date=13 February 2012|publisher=Fordham Univ Press|isbn=978-0-8232-3379-3}}
* {{cite book|last=Weber|first=A. S.|title=Nineteenth-Century Science: An Anthology|year=2000|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=m4SB4BHzFeIC|publisher=Broadview Press|isbn=9781551111650}}
{{Refend|colwidth=25em}}

==Further reading==
* {{cite book|last1=Béclard|first1=P. A.|author-link=Pierre Augustin Béclard|title=Additions to the General anatomy of Xavier Bichat|url=https://archive.org/details/61020280R.nlm.nih.gov|year=1823|publisher=Richardson and Lord}}
* {{cite book|last1=Dobo|first1=Nicolas|last2=Role|first2=André|title=Bichat, la vie fulgurante d'un génie|location=Paris|publisher=Perrin|year=1989|language=fr}}
* {{cite book|last1=Foucault|first1=Michel|author-link=Michel Foucault|title=[[The Birth of the Clinic]]}}

==External links==
{{Commons category|Xavier Bichat}}
{{wikiquote}}
{{wikisource|works=or}}
* {{Gutenberg author|id=47149}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Marie François Xavier Bichat}}
* {{OL author|1171828A}}
* [http://himetop.wikidot.com/xavier-bichat Some places and memories related to Xavier Bichat]
* [https://books.google.com/books?id=6c8SAAAAYAAJ ''Physiological Researches upon Life and Death'' by Xavier Bichat] (1809)
{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bichat, Xavier}}
[[Category:1771 births]]
[[Category:1802 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Jura (department)]]
[[Category:French physiologists]]
[[Category:French anatomists]]
[[Category:French pathologists]]
[[Category:Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery]]
[[Category:18th-century French writers]]
[[Category:18th-century French male writers]]
[[Category:19th-century French writers]]
[[Category:Vitalists]]