CHAPTER XVII
BORDEU AND BICHAT; THE BEGINNING OF EXPERIMENTAL PHYSIOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTAL PATHOLOGY IN FRANCE
Théophile Bordeu was born at Iseste, in the region of the Pyrenees, on February 22, 1722. He received his preparatory education at the College of the Jesuits, in Pau. Later, he entered the Medical School at Montpellier, and received his doctor’s degree from that institution in 1744. After graduation he devoted much of his time to giving instruction in anatomy, believing, as he did, in Seneca’s motto—“Doceo ut Discam” (I teach in order that I may learn). Notwithstanding the demands made upon his time by his private practice and by his numerous other engagements (inspection of the mineral springs in the neighboring region, courses of lectures to midwives, etc.) he managed to accomplish considerable research work, and one of the first fruits of these original studies is to be found in a mémoire which he wrote on the articulations of the bones of the face. This treatise, which he sent to the Académie Royale des Sciences, was received with marked favor, as shown by the facts that it was published by that body in their Recueil des Savans Étrangers and that its author was elected a Corresponding Member. In this treatise Bordeu calls attention to the fact that all the bones which form the background of the face are arranged in such a manner as to offer efficient resistance to the repeated upward impulses of the lower jaw, which impulses, acting upon the superior dental arch, have a constant tendency to push upward or to drive apart outwardly the bones into which the teeth of this arch are implanted. To appreciate fully the very creditable character of this essay the reader must remember that Bordeu had not yet reached his thirtieth year and that the ideas which he sets forth in this essay are the strict product of his own thinking and anatomical researches.
In 1752 Bordeu moved to Paris, and soon afterward published one of his best contributions to the science of medicine, viz., a monograph entitled: “Recherches Anatomiques sur la Position des Glandes, et sur leur Action.” The publication of this important and exhaustive mémoire occurred so soon after its author reached Paris that one is justified in assuming that all or the greater part of the research work upon which the essay is based was carried on at Montpellier. The object aimed at by Bordeu in this mémoire was to prove that
“the secretions which issue from these glandular organs represent a veritable elaboration of the liquid the elements of which are supplied by the blood, and are not merely a simple separation, as the term ‘secretion’ would seem to imply. This function,” says Bordeu, “is the result of the activities belonging properly to the gland as an organ, and does not in any sense—as some would have us believe—represent a mere mechanical relationship between the blood-vessels of the gland and the volume of the globules (blood corpuscles) that are carried into the organ through them. Nor does the function represent in the slightest degree the result of a chemical affinity between the fluid product secreted and the substance of the gland. Furthermore, the excretion (i.e., the expulsion) of this fluid product is due wholly to the vital action of the glandular organ; for it is a well-known fact that the adjacent muscles and organs occupy such positions in relation to the glands themselves that they are quite powerless to compress them and thus to favor expulsion of the fluid which they have secreted. Indeed, their influence is of quite the contrary character; instead of compressing these organs in the manner claimed they do no more than to communicate to them from time to time such trifling shocks and movements as favor their glandular activity.... Modern physiologists have added nothing of importance to what Bordeu has set forth in this mémoire, which deserves to be looked upon as one of the finest monuments that has ever been erected in honor of the science of man.” (Richerand.)
Bordeu’s mémoire, it seems, created a great sensation among the physicians of Paris, many of whom were still at that period ardent supporters of the mechanical and chemical doctrines taught by Boerhaave; and, as a matter of course, there was also unbounded curiosity among the better-educated physicians of the capital to see and make the acquaintance of the newcomer—this “young athlete,” as Richerand calls him,—who had not feared to enter the lists against such a formidable array of adversaries. The marked popularity that fell to Bordeu’s lot as a private practitioner in Paris after this brilliant beginning was not, however, of long continuance. Professional jealousy rarely fails to develop promptly when a physician manifests his ability to win patients from those of his colleagues who, for a certain number of years, have been established in practice, and this is precisely what happened in Bordeu’s case. The new mémoires which he published during the succeeding years—one on the pulse (in 1756), a second on “Metallic Colic” (in 1761–1763), a third on the “Colic of Poitou” (a year or two later), and a fourth on the “History of Medicine” (in 1768)—showed unmistakable evidences of the great talents which he possessed, but they attracted comparatively little attention and did not add to his popularity as a private practitioner. Furthermore, he derived very little if any material advantage from his appointment as one of the attending physicians at La Charité hospital.
The last two years of his relatively short life were attended with not a little suffering from attacks of gout, which compelled him to give up his private practice and to live exclusively upon the scant income which he derived from the small fortune (80,000 francs—$16,000) that represented his savings from a practice that had apparently been quite successful. His death occurred from cerebral apoplexy on November 23, 1776, when he was not quite fifty-four years old.
Bordeu did not live to see the ultimate triumph of his ideas with regard to the true nature of the secretions supplied by glands. The careful consideration of what this author has written upon the applications of the accessory sciences (chemistry and mechanics) to physiology should put us on our guard, says Richerand, against drawing incorrect conclusions with reference to the nature of vital processes.