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Francois Bichat, born in 1771, earned high rank both as a clinician and an anatomist. His education was begun in Nantes, but he studied surgery and anatomy in Lyons and Montpellier, subsequently going to Paris, where he became a member of Desault's family. After the death of his patron he lectured on surgery, and from 1797 on anatomy. Possessed of a feverish scientific activity, he became a member of the Société d'Emulation. Death overtook him in 1802 as the sequel of consumption and an injury received through a fall. He was the most capable physician of France in his time, and, brief as w>as his span of life, he was author of nine important volumes, the chief of which were a Treatise on Membranes and works on general and pathological anatomy. From the latter a new tendency in study took origin. He it was who gave utterance to the aphorism: "Take away some fevers and nervous troubles, and all else falls to the kingdom of pathological anatomy." As an evidence of his energy, it is related that he in one winter examined seven hundred bodies. He taught how to discriminate between disease processes, and notably subdivided peripneumonia into pleurisy, pneumonia, and bronchitis, these having been previously confounded. He once remarked: "You may observe disease of the heart, lungs, abdominal viscera, etc., night and morning by the sick-bed for twenty years, yet the whole furnishes merely a jumble of phenomena which unite in nothing complete; but if you open a few bodies, you will see the obscurity speedily give way,—a result never accomplished by observation if we do not know the seat of the disease." To Bichat is also due our modern recognition of cellular, osseous, fibrous, and other tissues, as such, wherever they appear throughout the body. He differentiated, without the aid of the microscope, twenty-one different tissues as simple and similar elements of the body, enumerating them as one does the chemical elements; he described the stomach as composed of mucous, serous, and muscular layers; overthrew the speculative tendency of medicine, and placed facts in the front rank; and so conspicuous were his services that he has been termed the "Napoleon of Medicine." He supplemented the influence of Pinel upon the side of pathological anatomy; called sensibility and contractility vital properties, whose alterations constitute disease, claiming, however, that the vital properties of individual tissues differed among themselves. His life and works are revelations to young men and show what can be accomplished at a very early age by sufficiently active and harmoniously developed brains.

In reviewing the theories and lives of those mentioned as medical luminaries of the eighteenth century, one experiences a feeling of mingled respect and disappointment—respect for the devoted way in which they worked and sought for the truth, and disappointment at so much waste of intellectual power and labor. The lesson is also taught, and should be impressed, that in all so-called new systems old principles for the most part reappear, and that the labors of the past are rarely so deliberately consulted as to guard against repetition and revamping of theories that had long before been proved futile.

Let me now mention a few other of the physicians of the last century who have left more or less of an impress upon their successors and upon our science. One man, in particular, historians are wont to remember with the honor that was denied him by his colleagues and contemporaries. I refer to Leopold Avenbrugger, who was born in Graz in 1722, and who, after pursuing his philosophical and professional studies in his native city, obtained, at the age of twenty-nine, charge of a Spanish military hospital; while thus employed lie invented the art of percussion as applied to diagnosis. This he gave the test of experience during seven long years before making it known to the profession, and even then it was not appreciated, but remained practically unnoticed until after his death, which occurred in 1809. He did receive a patent of nobility from the Emperor Joseph II, but this hardly compensated him for the contumely heaped upon him by his colleagues. Paulus Ægineta employed sounds and specula; Santoro used the balance, counted the pulse, and resorted to the use of the thermometer; Boerhaave employed the thermometer and the simple lens; Floyer, and after him Haller, utilized the watch in marking seconds; a Salernian practitioner utilized auscultation and percussion in tympanites and ascites; but the diagnosis of diseases of the great viscera by percussion was never known before Avenbrugger. His booklet of twenty-two pages, unsalable in his time, is to-day held worth far more than its weight in gold. His famous colleague, de Haën, wrote fifteen volumes without a word on percussion; Van Swieten did it no greater justice; in his great treatise the History of Medicine, Sprengel barely alludes to it; yet the contents of Avenbrugger's booklet were of more practical value than all that these other men ever wrote, or all the results of the vast and bloody campaigns during which it slept. In 1808 this volume was rescued from oblivion by Corvisart, who translated it into French and proclaimed its undying value.

During the earlier part of this century lived Werlhof, of Helmstâdt (1699-1767), a far-famed observer, author, and practitioner, who declined a professorship, and especially distinguished himself as a writer of German poetry. Though possessed of an exceptional knowledge of modern tongues, he wrote only in Latin,—the scientific language of the day. In 1734 he was appointed physician to King George II, in which position he attained world-wide fame, while indefatigable in his efforts to elevate science. He first described the disease known by his name,—morbus maculosus Werlhofii,—and struggled hard to establish in Germany the use of cinchona.

From 1740 to 1802 flourished Wichman, of Hanover, highly esteemed as a writer and practitioner. He is especially known for his pleas in favor of more scientific diagnosés, and his demonstration of how to make them. The rôle of the itch-mite in the transmission of scabies he demonstrated upon himself; to be sure, Bonomo, a hundred years before, had called attention thereto, but with little avail.

Another eminent Hanoverian was the fickle, stubborn, and misanthropic Zimmerman, born in 1728, in Berne, upon whom misfortune and disease played many shabby tricks. He was, however, a man of ingenious endowments, and merits especial regard, because he sought to free medical science from the charge of being a secret art.

Another of the prodigies of medical history was J. P. Frank, born (1725) in the Bavarian Palatinate, of pauper parents, and, while an infant, abandoned by a cruel father. His early life was passed in a religious school; at twenty-five he became a court and garrison physician, and later a professor in Gottingen; finally he went to Vienna, where he died in 1801. He was greatly beloved by his pupils, and Walther, the famous surgeon, said of him: "No one ever made so elevating and permanent an impression on me." He published an extensive work on forensic medicine and sanitation,—wherein he took up the hygiene of the individual, of the family, and of the school,—which constituted an effort far ahead of anything of the kind previously known. He is also memorable for efforts toward increasing the population, for the Thirty Years' War had depopulated extensive districts—to such a degree, indeed that in 1750 bigamy was legalized in Nuremberg and many other towns. Frank was distinguished for a keen and even caustic humor, whose subject was not infrequently himself.