Xavier Bichat Research Articles

Fidgeting Fingers and Fickle Flesh in Flaubert

ABSTRACT Writing about Francis Bacon, Gilles Deleuze comments on the body as the ‘zone of indiscernibility' between man and animal, especially ‘as it is flesh or meat.' Bacon's fleshy zone, I argue, finds an early illustration in Madame Bovary, where Flaubert will also incorporate notions of ‘animal life’ as described by the nineteenth-century pathologist, Xavier Bichat. This essay will examine these fleshy zones as they relate to changing ideas of skin, tactility, and those, fluid permeable zones between human and animal and between individual bodies and the penetrating forces of others and the environment.

Buccal Fat Pad: "Glandula" of Heister or "Boule Graisseuse" of Bichat?

Two prominent personalities in Medicine, Lorenz Heister (1683-1758) and Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), compete for the attribution of the discovery of the buccal fat pad (BFP). A careful reading of the original texts reported here, seems to identify Bichat as the first to describe the BFP. However, Heister most probably was the first to describe an accessory parotid gland.

Laennecs’ mediate auscultation: Child's play

Before Laennec, respiratory diseases that we recognize today were often confused, because the heart and lung are locked inside the rib cage. Impressed by the autopsies performed by Xavier Bichat (1771-1802), Laennec maintained the importance of the anatomoclinical method. But he indicated in his early 1820s lectures at the Collège de France that the discovery of auscultation was fortuitous and empirical. Duffin demonstrates that medical discoveries hardly obey an implacable logic, they arise outside of pre-established projects. In this paper, we retrace the chronology and antecedents at the origin of the important medical invention that is the stethoscope.

Anatomy, modern histology, and their mentors

Anatomy is a secular science that had contributions from great anatomists, mainly doctors. In the 16th century, modern anatomy emerged, and the studies of the physician and anatomist Andreas Vesalius, "father of modern anatomy", corrected the errors of his predecessors through human dissection and revolutionized the writing of anatomy with his work. Almost 200 years later, Marie François Xavier Bichat is "father of histology", contributed significantly to the description of tissues, expanding the studies of macroscopic anatomy to microscopic. In this article, the authors revisit the findings of anatomists notorious and their significant preliminary contributions to the current planning of surgical interventions.

Xavier Bichat and the renovation of the pathological anatomy.

Xavier Bichat, who lived a short life (1771-1802), was prominent French anatomist and physiologist during the time of revolution and one of the founders of French scientific medicine. He played a key role in the creation of the science of histology. Indeed, he was the first to see the organs of the body as being formed through the specialization of simple, functional units (tissues). Bichat is also known as one of the last of the major theorists of vitalism.

HF01-04 THE BIRTH OF UROLOGY AS A SURGICAL SPECIALTY AFTER THE FRENCH REVOLUTION

You have accessJournal of UrologyCME1 May 2022HF01-04 THE BIRTH OF UROLOGY AS A SURGICAL SPECIALTY AFTER THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Philip Van Kerrebroeck Philip Van KerrebroeckPhilip Van Kerrebroeck More articles by this author View All Author Informationhttps://doi.org/10.1097/JU.0000000000002541.04AboutPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints ShareFacebookLinked InTwitterEmail Abstract INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVE: Urology as a separate recognised surgical specialty started in France in 1890 when Félix Guyon was nominated as ‘Professeur d’Urologie’ at the University of Paris and opened the first department of Urology. This development originated from Urogenital Surgery as a consequence of the principles of the French Revolution. This study aims at documenting the mechanisms and individuals that explain how the French Revolution was the basis for the birth of Urology. METHODS: Based on a literature search and additional research of original documents, the development of Urogenital Surgery into Urology after the French Revolution was documented and studied. RESULTS: Before the French Revolution there was no well organized healthcare in France and by extension in Europe. Medical treatment was performed by travelling quacks (a.o. stone cutters/lithotomists) and surgeon-barbers. However, the French Revolution of 1789 caused a radical change also in medicine. The social role of the medical system was questioned, and medical doctors were considered corrupt and useless. The revolutionaries established ‘new style’ hospitals and adapted medical training with early practical training. The ‘Collegia Medica’ (guilds of doctors) were abolished, and the development of medical (sub)specialties was promoted. Several medical doctors interested in urogenital pathology were early revolutionaries and promoted the early developments of Urogenital Surgery into a separate specialty with specific training. Amongst them Jean Paul Marat, Pierre Joseph DESAULT, François CHOPART and Marie François Xavier BICHAT. Also Joseph SOUBERBIELLE (1754-1846), who performed >1200 suprapubic lithotomies, and was a descendant of the famous perineal lithotomist Jean Baseilhac (Frère Côme), was an active revolutionary. Jean CIVIALE (1792–1867) one of the first proto-urologist studied with Souberbielle and started a specific department for “Surgery of the Urinary Tract” in 1829. His pupil Jean Casimir Félix GUYON (1831-1920) accepted in 1890 a nomination as ‘Professeur d’Urologie’, and changed the name of his department into ‘Service d’Urologie’. This was the start of Urology as a recognized separate surgical specialty. CONCLUSIONS: The French Revolution changed medicine significantly and (sub)specialization was initiated. Several urogenital surgeons were politically active during the French Revolution and promoted Urogenital Surgery, leading to proto-Urology and in 1890 to the birth of Urology as a separate recognised surgical specialty. Source of Funding: None © 2022 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.FiguresReferencesRelatedDetails Volume 207Issue Supplement 5May 2022Page: e212 Advertisement Copyright & Permissions© 2022 by American Urological Association Education and Research, Inc.MetricsAuthor Information Philip Van Kerrebroeck More articles by this author Expand All Advertisement PDF DownloadLoading ...

БИША МАРИ ФРАНСУА КСАВЬЕ (1771-1802)

The article tells about the great French surgeon, anatomist and physiologist Marie-François Xavier Bichat, the founder of science about tissues – histology, discoverer in an anatomy and creator of such medical disciplines, as a thanatology (science about death) and pathoanatomy. The most essential moments and facts from biography of scientist are described, his basic scientific insights are briefly expounded. Main scientific works and publications, and also described by Bichat anatomic structures and formations are enumerated. His name is carried on by several eponyms in anatomy fossa (pterygopalatine fossa), Bichat’s protuberance (buccal fat pad), Bichat’s foramen (cistern of the vena magna of Galen), Bichat’s ligament (lower fasciculus of the posterior sacroiliac ligament), Bichat’s fissure (transverse fissure of the brain) and Bichat’s tunic (tunica intima vasorum). The substantive provisions of the scientific conceptions offered to them in morphology and pathoanatomy are expounded. The critical importance of scientific works and discoveries of Marie-François Xavier Bichat for modern science and practical medicine is emphasized

Editorial introductions

Current Opinion in Pulmonary Medicine was launched in 1995. It is one of a successful series of review journals whose unique format is designed to provide a systematic and critical assessment of the literature as presented in the many primary journals. The field of pulmonary medicine is divided into nine sections that are reviewed once a year. Each section is assigned a Section Editor, a leading authority in the area, who identifies the most important topics at that time. Here we are pleased to introduce the Journal's Section Editors for this issue. SECTION EDITORS Steven D. NathanSteven D. NathanSteven D. Nathan, MD, FCCP, is Director of the Advanced Lung Disease and Lung Transplant Program at Inova Fairfax Hospital. He is also Professor of Medicine at Virginia Commonwealth University-Inova Campus, USA. Dr Nathan received his medical degree from the University of the Witwatersrand Medical School in Johannesburg, South Africa. Subsequently, he completed a residency in internal medicine at Long Island Jewish Hospital in New York and fellowships in pulmonary medicine, critical care and lung transplantation at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, USA. Dr Nathan has been at Inova Fairfax Hospital since 1996. Dr Nathan has authored more than 500 publications, including original research manuscripts, abstracts, reviews, book chapters and three books on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Dr Nathan is a reviewer for multiple journals and is on the editorial board for the journal Thorax. He has served on multiple committees, including data safety and monitoring committees and steering committees for clinical trials, where he has also served as chair. He has also served on multiple US Food and Drug Administration advisory boards and is currently the Chair of the FDA Anesthesiology and Respiratory Therapy Devices Panel. Dr Nathan has delivered talks and served as chairperson of numerous sessions at many national and international conferences. Christopher S. KingChristopher S. KingChristopher S. King, MD, FCCP is a pulmonary and critical care physician at Inova Fairfax Hospital in northern Virginia. He is a member of the Advanced Lung Disease and Lung Transplantation team and serves as the Associate Program Director of the Adult Cystic Fibrosis Program and Pulmonary Hypertension Program. Additionally, he works as a member of the Medical Critical Care Service and is one of a core group of physicians who care for patients on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) for cardiac or respiratory failure. Dr King graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. in Biology and a concentration in Cell and Molecular Biology from Loyola College, Baltimore, USA. He received his medical degree from the University of Maryland Medical School. He is a member of both Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha honor societies. Dr King completed both his internal medicine residency and pulmonary and critical care fellowship in the United States Army at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. During his army career he served as a physician in multiple locales including South Korea; El Paso, Texas; and Afghanistan. Dr King has authored numerous publications on pulmonary and critical care disease, including original research, book chapters, review articles and one book on idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. He serves a reviewer for multiple scientific journals. He has also been the primary or sub-investigator on multiple clinical trials for interstitial lung disease and pulmonary hypertension. He also is a member of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) Venous Thromboembolism Treatment Guidelines Panel and the ACCP Guideline Oversight Committee. His primary clinical interest is in the critical care of Advanced Lung Disease. Martin R.J. KolbMartin R.J. KolbMartin R.J. Kolb is Professor of Respiratory Medicine at McMaster University, Canada, Director of the Division of Respirology, where he follows a large patient population with interstitial lung diseases. His research interest is in the biology of mesenchymal cells, matrix and vascular remodeling in lung fibrosis. He is active in preclinical and clinical drug development for interstitial lung diseases, especially pulmonary fibrosis. Bruno CrestaniBruno CrestaniBruno Crestani is Professor of Pneumology at the Paris-Diderot University, France, head of the Reference center for rare pulmonary diseases in Bichat hospital in Paris, and the director of the Inserm research group “Inflammation and pulmonary fibrosis” at the Xavier Bichat medical school. His research interests include the genetics of pulmonary fibrosis and the pathophysiology of fibrotic lung disorders with the aim to identify new therapeutic targets. Daniel A. CulverDaniel A. CulverDaniel A. Culver graduated from Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine, USA. He completed a traditional osteopathic internship at Southpointe Hospital, prior to Internal Medicine residency and fellowship training in Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at Cleveland Clinic. He is the Director of the Diffuse Parenchymal Lung Disease section in the Department of Pulmonary Medicine, and the Chief Research Officer in the Respiratory Institute. He is the president of the World Association of Sarcoidosis and Other Granulomatous Disorders (WASOG). Hilario NunesHilario NunesHilario Nunes is head of the Department of Pulmonary Medicine, at Avicenne University Hospital, a French Referral Center for Pulmonary Rare Diseases, Competence Center for Systemic and Auto-immune Diseases, and Excellence center for Sarcoïdosis. He is responsible for the research thematic “Risk factors and prognosis factors of Interstitial Lung Diseases” at the INSERM U1272 laboratory, Université Sorbonne Paris Nord, France. He is chair of the group 12.03 of the scientific assemblies of the European Respiratory Society: Sarcoidosis and other Granulomatous Interstitial Lung Diseases/Diffuse Pulmonary Lung Diseases He is member of the committee of the World Association for Sarcoidosis and Other Granulomatous Disorders (WASOG). He is responsible for the “Groupe Sarcoïdose Francophone”, an official scientific group of the French respiratory society.

Franz Joseph Gall on hemispheric symmetries

ABSTRACT Franz Joseph Gall believed that the two cerebral hemispheres are anatomically and functionally similar, so much so that one could substitute for the other following unilateral injuries. He presented this belief during the 1790s in his early public lectures in Vienna, when traveling through Europe between 1805 and 1807, and in the two sets of books he published after settling in France. Gall seemed to derive his ideas about laterality independently of French anatomist Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802), who formulated his “law of symmetry” at about the same time. He would, however, later cite Bichat, whose ideas about mental derangement were different from his own and who also attempted to explain handedness, a subject on which Gall remained silent. The concept of cerebral symmetry would be displaced by mounting clinical evidence for the hemispheres being functionally different, but neither Gall nor Bichat would live to witness the advent of the concept of cerebral dominance.

Dr. Frankenstein, I Presume? Revising the Popular Image of Frankenstein

This article critically examines the popular images of “Dr. Frankenstein” and his Creature, which took their iconic form in the 1931 film Frankenstein, influenced by medical experimentation following the Great War. Thus the title character is a medical student who stitches together stolen body parts to create a violent and subhuman monster, played to perfection by Boris Karloff. Because these images hardly resemble the original characters or plot of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the article presents a revised interpretation of that novel emphasizing its scientific context, particularly the theories of Erasmus Darwin and Xavier Bichat. Here Victor Frankenstein is a chemist inspired by alchemy, who applies an ingenious technique of spontaneous generation to grow tissues to form the body of a gigantic Creature. Its appearance is terrifying because it is a new species, uncannily similar to but also superior to a human being, and thus it threatens to replace humanity.

The historical origins of the vegetative state: Received wisdom and the utility of the text

ABSTRACTThe persistent vegetative state (PVS) is one of the most iconic and misunderstood phrases in clinical neuroscience. Coined as a diagnostic category by Scottish neurosurgeon Bryan Jennett and American neurologist Fred Plum in 1972, the phrase “vegetative” first appeared in Aristotle’s treatise On the Soul (circa mid-fourth century BCE). Aristotle influenced neuroscientists of the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries, Xavier Bichat and Walter Timme, and informed their conceptions of the vegetative nervous system. Plum credits Bichat and Timme in his use of the phrase, thus putting the ancient and modern in dialogue. In addition to exploring Aristotle’s definition of the “vegetative” in the original Greek, we put Aristotle in conversation with his contemporaries—Plato and the Hippocratics—to better apprehend theories of mind and consciousness in antiquity. Utilizing the discipline of reception studies in classics scholarship, we demonstrate the importance of etymology and historical origin when considering modern medical nosology.

Qu’apporte le « psychisch-somatisch » de Heinroth à la métapsychologie freudienne ?

The concept of psychosomatic illness is attributed to a German psychiatrist, Johann Christian August Heinroth (1773–1843). In many journals, reviews and chapters in the French literature, there are a number of misunderstandings that this article attempts to clarify and dispel. We consider that these misunderstandings result from a lack of familiarity with the theoretical environment in which this concept emerged, the discussions that this concept provoked throughout the nineteenth century, and the influence this idea has had on Freudian metapsychology. Heinroth's idea emerged in the years of the prolongation of the theory of vitalism (Georg Ernst Stahl). Stahl, a German medical doctor, discussed the theory of anatomy and the geometric representation of the body (cf. Descartes’ theory of Human). Stahl published physiology (physiology meaning the study of soul) to explain the essentials of human development. In remarking on the aging of the organs from infancy to adulthood, he considered that their associated transformations come from the soul. In this way, Stahl proposed that, with an excitation (in German, ‘Reiz’), the soul can have an influence on the organ. At the same time Marie François Xavier Bichat, a French surgeon, a vitalist, predicted death starting from the identification of an anatomical morbidity, or lesion. He invented anatomical pathology. The findings of Stahl then Bichat created the conditions for an epistemological revolution in the knowledge of medicine. The mechanistic tradition (geometric and anatomic) had to evolve and integrate certain aspects of this new knowledge. Vitalism provoked an epistemological revolution. Heinroth, a well-known psychiatrist, utilised this new theory to distinguish symptomatic pathology (mania) from the organic ailments (“idiopathic cerebral madness”) Melancholia and mania are constituted by Heinroth as symptomatic mental illnesses. Heinroth described insomnia, from the normal to the pathological (manic insomnia). He attempted to demonstrate that mania would come from “Reiz”, excitation, and that it concerned a physiological pathology. Heinroth developed a theoretical part and a clinical part of his work. In his clinical work, as he reflected on this manic insomnia, he introduced the concept of ‘psychisch-somatisch’to make a clinical connection between an excitation and its effect on the soma. Our commentary on this section of Heinroth's work is concerned to restore the different discussions on mania between vitalist and organicist psychiatry. This article equally reveals the fundamental link psychosomatics was claimed to have with this symptomatic mental illness, mania. Heinroth developed a treatment focussed on the somatic. He avoided the use of narcotics and based his approach on clinical observation oriented to the “Stimmung” (mood) of the soul, and on the “Reiz” (excitation). To perform this treatment, the therapist is able to use his or her influence with the patient “à travers leur organisme corporel” (through their bodily organism). This means specifically that the relation can influence the psychic state of the patient in the case of manic insomnia. At this historical moment in medicine, Stahl's notion of physiology constituted a progress. Medical knowledge was evolving and psychiatric knowledge, concerning symptomatic illness, appeared. Twenty years later, the opposition of Maximillian Jacobi, a member of the somatic school, recognised a certain value in Heinroth's concept of “psychisch-somatisch”. In order to discuss Heinroth's idea, Jacobi developed a study on mania. He defended an organicist stance to integrate some vitalist ideas but without a psychic perspective. To support his proposition (and to avoid ‘Reiz’and the notion of the soul), he proposed that each organ was independent and could produce an excitation. Jacobi proposed a “somatisch-physiologischen” (a somato-physiologic phenomenon): First soma and then second physiological effect. Jacobi claimed that “…it is meaningful to look for the somatic-physiological conditions which are connected to the appearance of psychic phenomena”. Jacobi's mistake is to believe in a strictly organic stance. In trying to sustain his argument, he renounced the notion of the superiority of the brain in mental illness. In his study, his opposition to the vitalists hinges on this point. In this way, any mental illness becomes symptomatic and not cerebral. The scientific revolution produced by Heinroth (and by Etienne-Jean Georget), when they introduced vitalism into the study of mental illness, removed psychiatry from medicine. This theory continued to transform medical epistemology with a huge tension, a crisis, evident in the materialist corpus. One could think that the debates had ended with Wilhem Griesinger (an organicist): “We always have to see … in the mental illnesses a condition of the brain”. The emphasis on psychic phenomena continued in the German school with Karl Wilhem Ideler (or Freidreich, Strümpell), because the difference between symptomatic and cerebral illness was not explained by the somatic theory. In fact, the discussions around the psychic or the somatic stances have persevered well beyond the deaths of Heinroth and Jacobi. They led the German debates in the early twentieth century. The influence of vitalist ideas remained, and Freud was well aware of the debate. Breuer introduced Freud to vitalism in 1892, but Freud resisted this position. He explained to Fliess the nature of his difference from Breuer. In this competitive debate between the vitalist and organicist theses, we notice that Freud quoted Ideler, Strümpell (vitalist) and Griesinger (organicist), in “The Interpretation of Dreams” (1900). Our article shows how Freud and Breuer did not agree about the vitalist theory. Breuer was a resolute vitalist (Hirschmüller, 1978); Freud had a different orientation. At the same time time, Kassovitz (1904) defended a theory of evolution, written by Lamarck (1804). Kassovitz was a close friend of Freud since 1886. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was a dualist scientist. Lamarck had read Stahl (a monist), and was influenced by him, but remained a dualist (soma and soul are different) and managed to integrate the vitalist notions in a physical fashion. The French researcher, Lamarck, is frequently misunderstood. On the one hand, he developed a theory of evolution, following Buffon's principles. On the other hand, he used the concept of “life” (vie–vital) and created the concept of “biology”, meaning “l’étude de la vie” (the study of life). He modified Stahl's idea and managed to relate the physical to physiology, without the notion of the Soul. The Lamarckian theory of evolution seduced Freud. The vitalist perspective seems present in Freudian metapsychology. Freud used the concept of excitation (“Reiz”) in the theory of the Drive. In our view, the vitalist perspective of Heinroth was instrumental in Freud's development of psychoanalysis, especially concerning the first theory of the Drives. Freud borrowed indirectly from Lamarck, influenced by vitalism (Stahl), and directly from the physiology of German psychiatry (“Reiz”, etc.). But not only this. In fact, to build the theory of the Drive, Freud borrowed from the vitalist theory and the organicist theory of psychiatry to construct a new thesis. The Drive became “a borderline-concept between the psychic and the somatic”. From this point on, psychiatry and psychoanalysis became two separate fields. In this history of the concept of the “psychisch-somatisch”, created on the basis of a symptomatic mental illness, mania, there has been a movement of reversion. The “psychisch-somatisch” as originally conceptualised gave up the notion of mental illness to interest itself in somatic illness. In our contemporary modernity it appears as a somatic illness potentially caused by psychic processes; this is an exclusion of the “psychisch-somatisch” from the field of mental illness, and an inclusion, in the somatic field. Our commentary aim to retrace the evolution of the vitalist theory in German psychiatry. We then study its influence up to the theory of the Drive (Freud), noting the scientific revolution provoked by this vitalist theory, and how it signified a progress in knowledge. We wager that it is time to review anew these fundamental debates, which have modernised the psychosomatic field and orientated it towards the somatic field.

The ‘vegetative part’: Organic and plant life in The Walking Dead

Abstract The ‘zombie gaze’ of AMC’s The Walking Dead (2010–) signals and elicits the inexorable presence of the ‘vegetative part’ in the human – the uncontrolled organic life that unsettles the very notion of the ‘person’ as well as those political systems founded upon it. Drawing on Roberto Esposito’s Third Person (2012) and late eighteenth-century physiologist Xavier Bichat, both of whom argue that humans have a ‘double life’ – our voluntary will inextricably embedded in an involuntary ‘vegetative part’ – I argue that the characters of Shane Walsh and Merle Dixon exemplify the ‘organic’ life, the automaticity of the biological. But while Esposito and Bichat use ‘vegetative’ metaphorically, in Season 4, The Walking Dead begins to explore the more literal ‘vegetal life’ of and surrounding the human, suggesting humans’ proximity not just to the ‘guts’ that mark the presence of the organic but also to plants that signal the ‘vegetative part’. The series thus asks what it might mean, in the words of philosopher Michael Marder, to think of ‘the constitutive vegetal otherness in ourselves’.

Triangular blocks and wind tunnels: Augustin Rey's logic of air resistance

How does air shape our cities? How does air become a factor in urban design? In a session before the 1906 International Congress for Sanitary Dwellings, Adolphe Augustin Rey famously compared cities to vast bodies ‘furrowed by canals of air’. Rey (1864–1934), a Beaux-Arts-trained architect who would count Le Corbusier among his devotees, was then highlightinging his best-known project: the winning entry for the Fondation Rothschild's workers' housing competition in Paris. Conceived between 1905 and 1909, Rey's entry was a redesign of a triangular block formed by the Rue de Prague, Rue Charles Baudelaire, and Rue Theophile Roussel. Rey's design featured innovative open-air courtyards and perforated façades that would not only filter and cleanse the air inside the building, but would also contribute to healthier air in the city.This paper examines Rey's winning design from a different context: the burgeoning aeronautical culture in turn-of-the-century France. The focus will be on his drawings, with their depiction of buildings as white solids and of the dominant winds as dark lines of moving air with variable pressures: in short, architecture placed inside a wind tunnel. I argue that Rey's designs for the Rothschild competition provided an aerodynamic solution to urban block design. Rey's name is not usually associated with aeronautics, and yet the fact that his drawings look like wind tunnel visualisations is no mere coincidence. Here, the operative logic is that of resistance. Much like the French physiologist Xavier Bichat understood life as a product of ‘resistance’ against pathogens, Rey's designs show architecture as a product of air resistance. In the end, this paper proposes how one of the most fundamental aspects of twentieth-century urbanism, the design of the city block, can be viewed in the light of advances in aeronautics at the turn of the century.

The inverse law of habit: Psychology of passions and emotions

The beginning of the 19th century, especially in France, is marked by a focus on the philosophical investigation of habit. A classic work is Influence de l?habitude sur la facult? de penser by Pierre Maine de Biran. This had been instigated by the physiological research of Marie Fran?ois Xavier Bichat, who stated the inverse law of habit: feeling (sentiment) is blunted by habit, whereas judgment owes to it its perfection. So the question is whether the inverse law implies that habituation has a negative influence on emotions, that it blunts them. In the paper I argue that the answer is negative if Maine de Biran?s version of the inverse law of habit is taken in the context of perceptual view of emotions. According to Maine de Biran sensation is blunted by habit, while perception is perfected. If emotion is a kind of perception of bodily reactions, then although due to habit there is a decrease of these reactions, the perception of them will in turn be sharpened. If we note that the general law behind the inverse law of habit is that there is an inverse ratio between passive and active experiences, then we may conclude that habit blunts passions, and perfects emotions.

The birth of the clinicopathological method in France: the rise of morbid anatomy in France during the first half of the nineteenth century

Morbid anatomy underwent extraordinary development in Paris during the last years of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century, for both philosophical and political reasons. The protagonists of this progress were primarily clinicians whose purpose was to link symptoms with pathological lesions and to elaborate a pertinent nosology. Pierre-Joseph Desault and Jean-Nicolas Corvisart were the forerunners, along with Xavier Bichat, a genius who died before he was able to realize his full potential. Guillaume Dupuytren, a renowned surgeon, founded an Anatomical Society with enthusiastic students; while Gaspard-Laurent Bayle and René-Theophile Laennec studied tuberculosis and developed the principles of clinicopathological correlations. Laennec's invention of the stethoscope in 1816 constituted a dramatic improvement of the possibilities of clinical examination and effectively established the clinicopathological method. A chair of morbid anatomy was created in 1835 for J. Cruveilhier, while a museum of morbid anatomy was established thanks to a 200,000 francs donation on behalf of G. Dupuytren. The French practitioners, however, did not believe that the microscope would play a major part in further medical progress, and after the revolution of 1848, the so-called School of Paris declined.

Tissue

Tissue derives from the Latin texere, “to weave”. Long used to describe a fabric of interwoven material, tissue gained currency in medical circles around 1800, when the French anatomist Marie-François Xavier Bichat applied it to the common structural elements shared by organs and systems. To order the bodily interior Bichat classified 21 types of tissue, each with a distinct function, and tried to understand diseases as lesions of these regions (for example, pericarditis). Tissues then became the subject of a new “general anatomy”, which was renamed histology in 1819. From the 1830s, tissues were no longer understood as the basic substance of the body; thanks to improvements in microscopy, they were now perceived as congeries of their component cells.New clinical and scientific techniques transformed tissue in the early 20th century: from an inert object of analysis to a valuable clinical resource and a dynamic experimental system. As part of increasing tissue grafting procedures, tissue such as skin was taken from human beings and animals, and grafted onto patients who had been scarred by burns, or injured in industrial accidents. In controversial procedures, sections from reproductive glands were also grafted to “revive” elderly and rich patients. At the same time, the development of tissue-culture techniques, from 1907, allowed scientists to directly manipulate tissues in vitro. This development gathered pace after World War II, when technical improvements and the use of antibiotics allowed tissues to survive longer in culture. They now became the sites of production for vaccines for polio, rabies, and rubella.Transatlantic changes in patent law in the 1980s gave tissues unprecedented economic importance as patentable commodities. Yet this shift clashed with a growing legal and philosophical emphasis on patients' autonomy, which, in turn, refigured tissues into contested objects in an emergent bioethics. These new and conflicted meanings were evident in disputes about the acquisition and ownership of tissues—such as the US case Moore vs The Regents of the University of California (1984–1990) and the UK Bristol Royal Infirmary and Alder Hey scandals (1999–2001). The latter two cases led to the passage, in the UK, of the 2004 Human Tissue Act, which makes patients' consent a fundamental principle for the medical storage and use of tissues. Tissue derives from the Latin texere, “to weave”. Long used to describe a fabric of interwoven material, tissue gained currency in medical circles around 1800, when the French anatomist Marie-François Xavier Bichat applied it to the common structural elements shared by organs and systems. To order the bodily interior Bichat classified 21 types of tissue, each with a distinct function, and tried to understand diseases as lesions of these regions (for example, pericarditis). Tissues then became the subject of a new “general anatomy”, which was renamed histology in 1819. From the 1830s, tissues were no longer understood as the basic substance of the body; thanks to improvements in microscopy, they were now perceived as congeries of their component cells. New clinical and scientific techniques transformed tissue in the early 20th century: from an inert object of analysis to a valuable clinical resource and a dynamic experimental system. As part of increasing tissue grafting procedures, tissue such as skin was taken from human beings and animals, and grafted onto patients who had been scarred by burns, or injured in industrial accidents. In controversial procedures, sections from reproductive glands were also grafted to “revive” elderly and rich patients. At the same time, the development of tissue-culture techniques, from 1907, allowed scientists to directly manipulate tissues in vitro. This development gathered pace after World War II, when technical improvements and the use of antibiotics allowed tissues to survive longer in culture. They now became the sites of production for vaccines for polio, rabies, and rubella. Transatlantic changes in patent law in the 1980s gave tissues unprecedented economic importance as patentable commodities. Yet this shift clashed with a growing legal and philosophical emphasis on patients' autonomy, which, in turn, refigured tissues into contested objects in an emergent bioethics. These new and conflicted meanings were evident in disputes about the acquisition and ownership of tissues—such as the US case Moore vs The Regents of the University of California (1984–1990) and the UK Bristol Royal Infirmary and Alder Hey scandals (1999–2001). The latter two cases led to the passage, in the UK, of the 2004 Human Tissue Act, which makes patients' consent a fundamental principle for the medical storage and use of tissues.

Joyce After Flaubert: The Cuckold as Imperfect Physician, the Writer as Physiologist

Although Joyce was not as familiar with the practice and theory of medicine as was Gustave Flaubert, this article argues that, through Flaubert's legacy, Joyce's writing was influenced by the French school of medical thought. Several aspects of Flaubert's style and narration-what has been dubbed his "medical realism"-were taken up by Joyce: the artist's impersonal perspective, the precision of descriptions, and the materialist attack against Romanticism, as well as the irony built into the narrative voice through free indirect discourse. While the cuckold in Madame Bovary is an incompetent surgeon serving as foil to the precise description of sentiments offered by the narrator, Joyce's cuckold in Ulysses is an amateur physiologist, both perspicacious and sympathetic to human suffering. Bloom's interest in internal bodily processes opens up new dimensions for a modernist aesthetics as he relates physiology and psychology, in accordance with the theories of Xavier Bichat, Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, and Pierre Jean Georges Cabanis. In keeping with such focus, Joyce's physiological version of stream-of-consciousness stems from Flaubert's clinical description of characters, but he directs matters even further inward.

Marie-François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802) and his contributions to the foundations of pathological anatomy and modern medicine

Marie-François Xavier Bichat (1771-1802) was a prominent French anatomist during a time of revolution and one of the founders of French scientific medicine. He conducted several experimental studies, which laid the foundation for modern physiology. Based on autopsy findings, Bichat introduced 21 tissues as the basic elements of organs. His name is carried on by several eponyms in anatomy and histology; Bichat's fossa (pterygopalatine fossa), Bichat's protuberance (buccal fat pad), Bichat's foramen (cistern of the vena magna of Galen), Bichat's ligament (lower fasciculus of the posterior sacroiliac ligament), Bichat's fissure (transverse fissure of the brain) and Bichat's tunic (tunica intima vasorum). This paper deals with the life and works of this early pioneer in anatomy and physiology.

Romantic theory: forms of reflexivity in the revolutionary era

This original study explores the new idea of theory that emerged in the wake of the French Revolution. Leon Chai sees in the Romantic age a significant movement across several broad fields of intellectual endeavor, from theoretical concepts to an attempt to understand how they arise. He contends that this movement led to a spatial treatment of concepts, the primacy of development over concepts, and the creation of metatheory, or the formal analysis of theory. Chai begins with P. B. Shelley on the need for conceptual framework, or theory. He then considers how Friedrich Wolf and Friedrich Schlegel shift from a preoccupation with antiquity to a heightened self-awareness of Romantic nostalgia for that lost past. He finds a similar reflexivity in Napoleon's battle plan at Jena and, subsequently, in Hegel's move from substance to subject. Chai then turns to the sciences: Xavier Bichat's rejection of the idea of a unitary vital principle for life as process; the chemical theory of matter developed by Humphry Davy; and the work of Evariste Galois, whose proof of the solvability of equations using radicals ushered in the age of metatheory. Chai concludes with reactions to theory: Coleridge's proposal of the conflict between reason and understanding as a model of theory, Mary Shelley's effort to replace theory with a different kind of relationship to external others, and Holderlin's reflection on the limits of representation and the possibility of fulfillment beyond it.