The French anatomist, pathologist, and physiologist Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771-1802) was the founder of general anatomy and animal histology.

On Nov. 11, 1771, M. F. X. Bichat was born in Thoirett, Jura. His father, a physician, was his first teacher of anatomy. He studied anatomy and surgery at Montpellier and Lyons and later served as an assistant to P. J. Desault, a famous physician at the Hôtel-Dieu, a hospital in Paris. In 1800 Bichat, after the death of Desault, became physician at the Hôtel-Dieu. From 1799 onward he abandoned surgery and did only research in anatomy, performing as many as 600 autopsies in a single year. He investigated the structure of the body generally, rather than studying particular organs as separate entities. He broke down the organs into their common elemental materials, for which he introduced the term "tissues."

Bichat rejected the iatrochemistry of the later...