-05.

The man who gave the greatest impetus to the study of scientific
medicine at this time was Bichat, who pointed out that the pathological
changes in disease were not so much in organs as in tissues. His
studies laid the foundation of modern histology. He separated the
chief constituent elements of the body into various tissues possessing
definite physical and vital qualities. "Sensibility and contractability
are the fundamental qualities of living matter and of the life of our
tissues. Thus Bichat substituted for vital forces 'vital properties,'
that is to say, a series of vital forces inherent in the different
tissues."(11) His "Anatomic Generale," published in 1802, gave an
extraordinary stimulus to the study of the finer processes of disease,
and his famous "Recherches sur la Vie et sur la Mort" (1800) dealt
a death-blow to old iatromechanical and iatrochemical views. His
celebrated definition may be quoted: "La vie est l'ensemble des
proprietes vitales qui resistent aux proprietes physiques, ou bien la
vie est l'ensemble des fonctions qui resistent a la mort." (Life is the
sum of the vital properties that withstand the physical properties,
or, life is the sum of the functions that withstand death.) Bichat is
another pathetic figure in medical history. His meteoric career ended
in his thirty-first year: he died a victim of a post-mortem wound
infection. At his death, Corvisart wrote Napoleon: "Bichat has just died
at the age of thirty. That battlefield on which he fell is one which
demands courage and claims many victims. He has advanced the science of
medicine. No one at his age has done so much so well."

(11) E. Boinet: Les doctrines medicules, leur evolution, Paris,
1907, pp. 85-86.

It was a pupil of Corvisart, Rene Theophile Laennec, who laid the
foundation of modern clinical medicine. The story of his life is well
known. A Breton by birth, he had a hard, up-hill struggle as a young
man--a struggle of which we have only recently been made aware by the
publication of a charming book by Professor Rouxeau of Nantes--"Laennec
avant 1806." Influenced by Corvisart, he began to combine the accurate
study of cases in the wards with anatomical investigations in the
dead-house. Before Laennec, the examination of a patient had been
largely by sense of sight, supplemented by that of touch, as in
estimating the degree of fever, or the character of the pulse.
Auenbrugger's "Inventum novum" of percussion, r